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Buying colors pre-mixed can save a lot of hassle! But if you are first learning, you should probably go through the pain of mixing out all the colors. You should probably buy a color wheel to acclimate yourself to the color spectrum. Primary colors are the most basic colors. Secondary colors come from mixing two primary colors and tertiary colors come from mixing a secondary with one of its constituent primary colors. All of these colors are known as Hues.

To start with, get a decent container or mixing surface, pallet knife (plastic is recommended as metal can rust and contaminate your mixtures), and your primary colors. It seems you end up using a lot of lighter colors, so I recommend buying more yellow and white to start with. As you get more careful in mixing, you may need less of these. Also, primary colors may not necessarily exist in whatever type of paint you are using. For example, you may need to mix a Warm red with a Cool red to make Primary red. Don't fret, however, other things like quantity are more important.
Figure out how much paint you need, next. If you are inexperienced, you may want to acquire several small air-tight containers to put batches of mixed paint into, so you don't have to constantly keep mixing up new small batches and have them not be the exact same color. Depending on what you are doing, you may want to just mix on the fly with a pallet board or premix for several projects at once. Some paints keep and some are impractical to keep, so use your head.
Now, start mixing. Go from light to dark, to conserve lighter pigments. Try to get as close as possible to what the color wheel shows, or for whatever hue you are trying to achieve.
You can also add white, black, or gray to a saturated color. Saturated colors are any hues on the color wheel at any infinite points, where black, white, or gray are not added. Adding black to a hue makes it a Shade. Adding white to a hue makes it a Tint. Adding gray to a color desaturates it into a Tone.
One other technique is called Deintensifying. That means that you add the color opposite the one you have on the color wheel - colors straight across on the color wheel in plain speak. The more colors you mix together, the more neutral the color becomes. This usually means you end up with an ugly brownish-green mess.
Mixing colors is so very necessary to an artist's success and perhaps the best way to challenge a new artist is to try to paint a favorite picture or copy a painting from one of the Masters. So, without further ado, get mixing! Be sure to have fun, though. There is enjoyment to be had by all.

Learn more about this author, Travesty Jones.
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