Oil Paint Colors: How to Mix or Purchase the Perfect Paint Color, Every Time

Walking into an art store and staring at the rows upon rows of oil colors can be either very exciting (if you are like me and want all of them), or very overwhelming (if you are also like me and you just want a green that will do what you want it to do but you don't know which one is the right one).  Here I will go over how to mix the perfect color every time, how to purchase the correct color every time, and how to purchase a new secondary or tertiary color mix.

How to Mix the Perfect Color Every Time

In our color experiment we will talk about one of the more difficult colors to mix, green, in order to paint the fig leaf image to the right. To get the "right" green we need for our painting, we need to understand two of the three general characteristics of paint: Color Temperature and Opacity.

Color Temperature

Color temperature is important, even for abstract paintings, as it can help you create better color harmony within your work, as well as create correct lights and shadows.

If your shadows are cool, your lights will be warm. If your shadows are warm, your lights will be cool.

To help decided if a color is warm or cool, remember that orange is the warmest color on the color wheel, and blue is the coolest. As you move towards orange you get warmer colors and as you move towards blue you get cooler colors. Within each color family there is a variety of warm and cool colors. For warm and cool blues and oranges, think of the colors moving toward green or red.

Let's look at an example of how understanding color temperature can help us mix the paint that we need. Take the greens down below:

Let's say that I own the green on the top row, phthalo green, which I am using to paint the cool shadows of our leaves. As I move into the light side of the leaves, I need a warm green from the bottom row. This will create the correct light and shadow color temperatures.

To achieve my warm green, I take very little of my pthalo green (as it is a strong tinter) and add to it my warm yellow, Hansa Yellow Medium. Hansa Yellow Medium is a warm, semi-transparent paint. This will transition my cool green down into the second warm color row, all while keeping the mass tone, the base color, of my leaf the same. But we are not done yet.

Opacity 

Mixing paint will change the opacity of our paint. There are three levels of opacity: opaque, semi-transparent, and transparent. Opaque paints advance towards the viewer with a thick, buttery consistency and should be used for lights. Transparent paints recede away from the viewer with a thin, glossy consistency and should be used for shadows.

For our shadows we are using the transparent, cool pthalo green. Which means that for our lights we will need a warm green color. We need to choose not only a warm yellow but also one that is opaque so that it will advance towards us.

The yellow we chose above was Hansa Yellow Medium. This is a warm yellow, but it is also semi-transparent. This could be enough to create the depth that we want, but if we really want the leaves to advance, we need something different. An opaque warm yellow, which, in this scenario, we don't have. So we will have to purchase something new.

How to Purchase the Correct Color Every Time

To purchase the correct color every time, first we need know a few things about the color we want: the hue we need, the temperature we need, and the opacity we need.

In our warm green example we know the hue we need is yellow so that we can make green. We know the color temperature we need is warm so that we can create correct warm highlights. And finally, we know the opacity we need is opaque so that we can create advancing highlights. Add it all together and we know that we need a warm, opaque yellow.

As I primarily use Gamblin paints, before I even go the store, I always look on their website to see which color will fulfill my needed requirements.

In this case, I would go to their color site, here, scroll down to the yellows, and click through each option until I find what I am looking for. In this case, Cadmium Yellow Medium.

And now we have done it, we can use our pthalo green for our shadows and cadmium yellow medium for our highlights.

When to Purchase a new Paint Mix of a Secondary or Tertiary Color

Here is my rule of thumb: if I find myself mixing the same color every painting session, it might be more cost effective to just go purchase that color mixture instead of wasting my other paints to achieve that color.

Keeping with our warm green, if I paint a lot of leaves and am finding myself always mixing a specific green, it would be faster and easier to just go purchase that green in a tube.

However, its important to note that some mixtures just don't come in a tube and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Variation in a mixture helps to create a more vibrate and colorful painting. So in the end do I own a lot of secondary and tertiary colors? No, not really. I have one purple and two oranges. I prefer to have variation within my reds, yellows, and blues. Which in turn will give me the color options that I need in order to mix my secondary and tertiary colors. That being said, I do have several greens. They just make my life easier.

Is there anything that I missed? Do you prefer to mix or to purchase your secondary colors? Let me know down in the comments!

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This is a rewrite of my original blog post, Characteristics of an Oil Paint: A Guideline to Purchasing the Perfect Paint Every Time