Brown. It's an uninteresting word, but it covers a wide range of colors - there are light ones, dark ones, warm ones, cool ones, browns tending towards green, red or blue. You learned in elementary school that "green and red make brown" and while that's true, the same goes for blue, orange, and many other color combinations! Mixing many colors together to get brown is very easy, but getting the perfect shade requires more precision. Here's how to do it.
Steps
Method 1 of 2: The Color Wheel
Step 1. Examine a color wheel
A color wheel is a disc divided into colored sections placed in the same order as the colors of the rainbow. Contains primary, secondary and tertiary colors. Primary colors include red, blue, and yellow, while secondary colors include orange, green, and purple. On the color wheel, the tertiary ones are found between the primary and secondary.
Step 2. Blend the primary colors
The quickest and easiest way to create brown is to mix all the primary colors. Using a color palette knife, blend the blue, yellow, and red colors until the desired shade of brown is achieved. You won't have to use the same amount of product for each primary color; add different proportions by modifying and customizing the hue of your brown.
Step 3. Blend the complementary colors
When you look at the color wheel, the complementary colors are diametrically opposite, positioned opposite each other. Complementary colors are blue and orange, red and green, and yellow and purple. By mixing any of these color pairs you will get a shade of brown that differs slightly from the others.
Step 4. Change the brightness of the tint
Add white or black to lighten or darken your brown. Alternatively, you can decide to add more of the dark color used to create the brown, but this will slightly change the tone as well as darken it. If you want to get a very light brown instead, it is advisable to add a large amount of light color to a small amount of brown created previously. Darkening a light tone is easier than lightening a dark tone.
Step 5. Increase or decrease saturation
To make your brown brighter, add more of the original blended colors. To make it more dull instead, add a medium intensity gray to your color blend.
Step 6. Change the hue
If you created your own shade of brown by mixing blue and orange, you can change the hue slightly by adding other colors. For example, to create a warmer-toned brown, add some red to the blend. To create a dark, cloudy one, add some purple or green. Remember that you can change the complementary color pairs used initially by adding many more colors. If you want to change the shade of your brown only slightly, add some tertiary colors.
Method 2 of 2: Using a Pantone
Step 1. Get a Pantone
Although they are used primarily in printing, Pantones offer precise color references to help you find exactly the brown you are looking for. You can buy a new or used one on the net.
It is important to remember that Pantone defines colors according to the CMYK convention, not RGB. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (Turquoise, Magenta, Yellow and Black). White is not included, as it is generally the color of the paper being printed on
Step 2. Find the brown you are looking for
You will have to go through a lot of papers, so be patient. You can also use Photoshop or other graphics programs, which often include Pantone colors in many formats.
- Look for the exact percentages of magenta, yellow, blue and black needed for that color and mix them with that criterion. Note that in this example the percentages are C: 33%, M: 51%, and Y: 50%.
- Note that magenta, yellow, and turquoise are more accurate primary colors, but they are not the standard used in painting. Read | this article for more information.
Step 3. Mix your colors
Using the proportions indicated on the Pantone, blend your colors to create an exact shade of brown. Pantone Guide is normally used for mixing printing ink, but magenta, cyan (a shade of blue), black and yellow can be used to create the perfect shade of brown.
Advice
- You can start with a brown paint and modify it by following the directions in this guide if it is not the shade you want.
- Before you start mixing colors make sure your brush is clean, otherwise you will add unwanted color tones to your mix.
- Unless you have dosed your brown blend with precise percentages, it will be potentially impossible to replicate the same hues and shades through simple color mixing. If you plan to use your brown color for a long time, start by mixing large amounts of color, so as not to run out of it halfway through the project.
