Yellow is a primary, so a clean yellow starts from a tube. Lemon Yellow is cool and slightly green; it makes clean greens and pale yellows. Cadmium Yellow is warm; it makes golds and oranges. Yellow is also the weakest of the primaries: add the other colours to the yellow, never the yellow to them, or you’ll need a pile of yellow to make any difference.
Darkening yellow without olive
Black turns yellow olive green; so does blue. Yellow’s complement is violet, and a touch of violet is how mustards, ochres and dark golds are mixed.
Orange
Red and yellow make orange, and the red decides what kind. Cadmium Red with Cadmium Yellow gives a bright, warm orange; Quinacridone Magenta with Lemon Yellow gives a duller, pinker one. Red is much stronger than yellow, so start with the yellow and add red a little at a time.
- More yellow: amber, mango, marigold. More red: persimmon and red-orange.
- Peach and apricot: a light orange in plenty of white (Peach is 24 parts white, 2 Cadmium Yellow, 1 Cadmium Red).
- Burnt orange: orange dulled with a little blue. Add it in tiny amounts.
- Coral: orange pushed towards pink with a touch of magenta, then lightened.
Brown is a dark orange
Mix all three primaries and you get brown. The balance decides which: more red for chestnut and mahogany, more yellow for tan and caramel, more blue for dark, cool browns. The quickest route is orange plus a little blue.
- Tan and beige: lighten with white plus a touch of yellow, so they don’t go grey-pink.
- Rust and terracotta: more red and yellow than blue.
- Chocolate and dark brown: more of everything, especially blue, and no white.
- Taupe and mushroom: brown dulled towards grey with extra blue and white.
Gold, silver, bronze and copper
You can’t mix the shine: metallic paint reflects light like metal because it contains mica or metal flakes. What you can mix is the flat colour of the metal, and that’s how painters paint metal anyway: a flat base, darker and lighter values, and sharp highlights. Strong contrast sells it, so put the darkest dark next to the brightest highlight.
- Gold: a warm ochre-yellow base, deep brown-gold shadows, highlights of pale yellow or white.
- Silver: a cool mid-grey, near-black reflections, pure white highlights.
- Copper and bronze: orange-brown and olive-brown bases with warm light highlights.
Shortcut tubes
Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber are cheap, opaque, lightfast and save mixing time for browns, golds and earths. Add them to your paints and the recipes will use them where they help.