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There are two important aspects of mixing color when working with art: color theory and practical techniques.

First, a brief overview of color theory. The three primary colors in art are red, yellow, and blue. With these three colors, the secondary colors can be made; these are orange (red and yellow), green (yellow and blue), and purple (blue and red). Depending on the concentration of color used, there is an endless variation of colors that can be created out of the primary colors alone.

More interesting in mixing color are tints and shades. Tints are lighter colors made by adding white to the mix. Shades are darker colors made by adding black to the mix. With experimentation and practice, mixing any color you want out of the primary colors, white, and black is technically possible.

In practice, it's a good idea to have a wide array of basic colors. A good guide is beginner painting kits. They normally consist of smaller tubes of red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple, ochre (yellow brown), brown, black, white, gray, and possibly a second shade of red. Darker tones of red tend to overtake other colors in paint, just like black does. These colors represent the basic color palette of a painter.

Mixing color involves patience and practice. The best method is to slowly mix a color together. For example, to make a dark green, mix green with black. If too much black is used right away, it turns a dark gray/brown color. By slowly mixing in black, the green is still the dominant color and just gets darker. It's very difficult to lighten a color back towards the original tone. When black is used, it's not going to go back to the original color no matter how much effort is used. Avoid this in mixing any color by slowly blending the palette.

Another thing to consider is unity in a project. A realistic landscape, for example, is most likely going to have a blue sky, green plants, and grey shadows. While mixing the colors to their exact state in nature will look lovely, cohesion can be added by keeping the palette consistent. This can be accomplished by choosing a dominant color (or colors) and blending the dominant(s) into each color. So if the dominant color is the blue in the sky, unity can be achieved by blending a little bit of blue into the green plants and gray shadows. This isn't as realistic a style. It can, however, make a painting look more polished when used properly.

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