Mixing colours — Art, 7–10 years
A small set of paint colours can make many new colours when we mix them in careful amounts.
Colours can combine
When two paints are mixed, their colour qualities join and make a new colour. In basic paint work, yellow and blue make green, blue and red make purple, and red and yellow make orange. White can make a colour lighter; black usually makes it darker.
Why learn to mix
Artists cannot carry every possible colour in a box, and a ready-made colour may not feel right for the picture. Mixing lets them match a leaf, sunset or shirt more closely. It also gives a painting a connected look because the colours come from the same small set.
Making orange
Put one brushful of yellow paint on a palette and add one brushful of red. Stir them together until no separate streaks remain: the result should be orange. Add another brushful of yellow for a lighter, yellower orange, or more red for a deeper orange.
The trap: using too much
A common mistake is squeezing in lots of paint because the first mix looks too weak. This is reasonable: wet paint can look different from a dried patch, and the change is hard to judge. Start with small amounts, test a dab, and add more of one colour slowly.
Where it appears
Painters use mixing to match a wall, a portrait or a landscape. Printers and screen designers also combine a small number of colours, though light on a screen behaves differently from paint. The key idea remains: chosen amounts of colours create a result you can control.
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