How To Mix Watercolors?

Juliet D'cruz

Updated on:

Art
how to mix watercolors

Learning how to mix watercolors is essential to improve your watercolor painting. We all have used watercolors to create bright and colorful paintings during school days. A variety of colors and tones can be created by mixing different colors of paint together. In today’s post, I will show you how to mix watercolors to make other colors. Mixing watercolors is an easy process if you have the proper supplies and setup. It helps you to build a foundation for watercolor painting. Here, we’ll guide you so that you can mix up different watercolors with ease. Without wasting much time, let us now learn how to mix watercolors in detail.

How To Mix Watercolors?

In this section, I will teach you how to mix watercolors. It is better to assemble your materials before you start mixing watercolors. For this process, you’ll need a palette, watercolors, water, brushes, and rough cloth.

You can follow these steps to learn how to mix tube watercolors on a palette.

  1. First, decide which color you would like to mix.
  2. Now, take a small amount of watercolor paint onto a palette.
  3. You can skip this step if you are using a watercolor paint kit or dry watercolor paint.
  4. Take a cup filled with clear water to clean and wet your brush.
  5. Dip the brush tip into the water to fully saturate it.
  6. Then, dip your brush into the first watercolor.
  7. Swirl the brush tip into the paint to transfer it to your brush.
  8. Stop when the watercolor starts looking translucent.
  9. Now, clean off and re-wet your brush with water.
  10. Make sure you wipe down the brush bristles with a rough cloth.
  11. Use the wet brush to pick the second color that you want to mix.
  12. Swirl this brush into the first paint on your palette.
  13. Mix both colors well together to create a new color.

Water will help to activate the paint and can be replaced when it becomes murky brown or black. Just make sure you mix an equal amount of paint to get the right shade. 

However, you can follow the same steps if you want to know how to mix watercolors on paper. A white sheet of paper will give you the best indication of how the color will look on your canvas. Just make sure you test the colors you’re mixing on scrap paper before you apply them to your final work surface.

Click here – How To Mix Skin Color Paint?

Mix Watercolors Using Watercolor Mixing App

The watercolor mixing app comes in handy for making different color combinations. Real Color Mixer, Paleto, and True Color are some popular watercolor mixing apps. These applications display the percentage of color mixing. You can easily download and install these apps via Apple Store and Play Store.

Mix Watercolors For Skin Tones

It is quite tough to mix the perfect skin tone for a project. You can follow these steps to learn how to mix watercolors for skin tones.

  1. On a palette, take a small portion of yellow paint, red paint, and a bit of blue paint.
  2. You might also need a bit of brown paint to get a medium skin tone.
  3. Take a cup filled with clear water to clean and wet your brush.
  4. Dip the brush tip into the water to fully saturate it.
  5. Mix all three colors well together to get the perfect skin tone.

However, you can keep adding a little bit of red/yellow/blue/brown paint until it matches the tone you’re looking for. 

Mix Dark Watercolors

Many beginners often wonder how to mix dark watercolors. You might end up with a different color if you mess up with the proportion. We recommend you use the standard primary colors for making darker shades. You can play with the proportions (Yellow, Blue, Red) by mixing two colors first. And then add a third or more colors to achieve the best result.

Mix Olive In Watercolors

Mixing warm-biased yellows with cool-biased blues will give you more muted greens. But, do you know how to mix olive in watercolors? For this, you can use a combination of Lemon yellow, Paynes Grey, and Cadmium Yellow to create Olive Green. The rest mixing procedure will be the same as given above. 

Note: You can also use a combination of Cadmium Yellow, Ultramarine, and Paynes Grey to make Olive Green.

How Much Water To Mix With Watercolor Paint?

You should always aim for a 50:50 ratio of water to mix watercolors. Remember that the paint should neither be too diluted nor too concentrated.

On Mixbu you can read more about various topics.

FAQ

How Much Water Do You Mix With Watercolor Paint?

The paint should be neither too diluted nor too concentrated; aim for a 50/50 ratio of water to paint for each color.

Why Is Honey Used In Watercolor?

This traditional base creates willing watercolors ready for your brush and yields even, fluid washes. Honey also allows for stronger, truer colors. With a complete range of pleasing pigments — from delicate tints to dark, concentrated colors — you’ll discover more color possibilities with M.

Do You Paint The Background First With Watercolor?

In general, if you want the background color to show through and become part of the subject, then paint the wash first. If you want to keep your background and your subject clearly and distinctly separate, then be sure to use masking fluid to mask your subject before painting your wash.

Why Black Is Not Used In Watercolor?

Black pigments in general have a high tinting strength. This means they can easily become overpowering when mixed with other paints. Also black paints are very opaque. As a result they tend to hide underlying colors when layered over the top using a glazing technique.

Click here – How To Mix Oil And Water?

What Is The Golden Rule Of Watercolor?

You can summarize a landscape or an atmosphere with only few brush strokes. Golden rule 2: Use a lot of water. At the beginning use a lot of water and you reduce it gradually as you go along the painting.

What Is The Theory Of Watercolor Mixing?

In watercolor painting you control the water to pigment ratio to create the relative lightness and darkness of your paint. For example, a lot of water mixed with very little paint will create a very light color; a little bit of water mixed with a good bit of paint will create a dark color.!

Conclusion

In the above post, I’ve discussed how to mix watercolors from a tube in detail. Watercolor mixing is a very breezy process as you don’t require an intense focus while experimenting with different shades. You only need to mix two different colors to get the right shade you want. Here, water plays an important role as it helps to lighten a color without adding white paint. You can also activate dry watercolors with water. Just make sure you mix enough color in the beginning because re-mixing the exact tones can be a bit difficult. Once you learn how to mix watercolors, you can understand various watercolor variations!