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The rainbow of colors is at your fingertips if you have the primary colors in front of you. Anyone can learn how to mix colors. It is simple and it can be quite fun. Children are usually excited as are adults to discover the products they can come up with when they are encouraged to mix colors themselves instead of depending on boxed premixed colors.

The Foundation Is The Primary Colors

What are the primary colors you ask? Red,blue,and yellow are the primary or foundational hues. From these everything else is made with the exception of white which is actually a lack of color.

Even Black and Brown Are Mixable
Even black and brown are made from the primary colors. Black is every color with more blue and brown is every color with more yellow and red than blue. One way to mix colors is to do some experimentation with some inexpensive water colors in the basic hues.

The Next Story Is The Secondary Colors
If you compare mixing colors to building a house the wall would be the next set of colors. The color orange springs from a mix of red and yellow. Green results from blue and yellow. The color of royalty,purple, is a product of a mingling of blue and red. So now you have three primary colors,red,yellow and blue as well as three secondary colors,green,orange and purple. Adding these together you have six colors. Totalling these with black, brown and white you have a total of nine posiblilities and you have only just begun.

Variations on Those Themes
Just as when you play piano you have the white keys and the black keys. When mixing colors you have the primary and secondary colors. On the piano you can make all kinds of mixtures of sounds by combining the primary notes in different ways. On a palette you can make endless colors with combinations of these colors. Turquoise,chartreuse, aquamarine,lime,baby blue,robin's egg blue,hot pink,those can be produced by adding more yellow to a green or more blue.

Try a little dab of this and a little dab of that. Add two more dabs and the color changes to a brighter hue or a darker shade. A stripe will change dramatically when overlapping another hue. The principle of mixing colors to produce changes is used in all sorts of ways from the dots in photographs to the dyes in a batik clothe and of course in glazes on pots and in paintings. Knowing the basic principles of how to produce changes in colors opens up possiblilites that can be intigueing.

Learn more about this author, Candace Williams.
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