Chocolate. Chocolate is a common word, but includes a wide variety of colors, such as light brown, dark brown, warm brown, cool brown, reddish brown, greenish brown, and bluish brown. You learned in elementary school that "red and green make brown," and that's true. But actually blue and orange and many other color combinations make brown too! Mixing several colors to produce a tan is fairly easy, but refining the right level of brown takes a bit of skill. Follow the guide below to learn how to mix paint colors to make browns.
Step
Method 1 of 2: Using Color Circles
Step 1. Examine a color circle
The color circle is a disc that is divided into color parts according to the colors of the rainbow. The color wheel contains the primary, secondary, and tertiary colors. The primary colors include red, blue, and yellow, while the secondary colors are orange, green, and purple. Tertiary colors are colors that are found between the primary and secondary colors on the color wheel.
Step 2. Mix the primary colors
The first and most basic way to create brown is to mix all the primary colors together. This means that you use a palette knife to mix blue, yellow, and red until you get the brown you want. You don't need to use every primary color in exactly the same amount, but just add a different primary color to change the color of your brown paint a little.
Step 3. Mix complementary colors
On the color wheel, complementary colors are colors that are opposite each other. Complementary colors are blue and orange, red and green, and yellow and purple. Mixing these color pairs will create slightly different shades of brown.
Step 4. Change the brightness or darkness of your brown paint
Add black or white to lighten or darken the paint color. It's okay to add the darkest color used to create the brown, but this will also change the hue of the result a bit, as well as make it appear darker. If you want a very light brown, it will be easier to mix a lot of the bright color with a little of the brown that you have already mixed. Adding a dark color to a light color is easier than adding a light color to a dark color.
Step 5. Increase or decrease the saturation
To make your browns lighter, add more of the colors you mixed earlier to make up the mix. You can make the color more muted by adding a medium gray paint to the mix.
Step 6. Change the hue
If you created your tan by mixing blue and orange, you can change the hue a bit by adding other colors. For example, to make a warmer brown, add red to the mix. To make the brown color dark and somber, you can add purple or green. Keep in mind that your initial complementary color pairs can be changed by adding as many other colors as you want. Add tertiary colors to make a more subtle color change.
Method 2 of 2: Using the "Pantone" Color Guide
Step 1. Get the "Pantone" Formulas Handbook
Although typically used in the printing industry, the "Pantone" book provides precise color references to help you find the exact brown color you're looking for. You can buy new or used "Pantone" books online.
However, it is important to note that the Pantone book defines colors in the CMYK color space, not RGY. CMYK is an acronym for Cyan (turquoise), Magenta (reddish purple), Yellow (yellow), and Key/Black (black). RGY is an acronym for Red (red), Green (green), and Yellow (yellow). White is not included because usually white is the color of the paper used for printing, so you will have to do some interpretation yourself
Step 2. Find the brown color you want
There are tons of color choices, so be patient. You can also take advantage of "Photoshop" or other graphics applications, which often use "Pantone" colors in a variety of formats.
- Find the exact percentages of magenta, yellow, cyan, and black needed to produce these colors, and mix well. Note that in this example, the percentages are C:33%, M:51%, and Y:50%.
- Note that magenta, yellow, and cyan are more accurate primary colors, but are not standard colors for mixing paints at this point. For more information, see this article.
Step 3. Mix your colors
Using the proportions found in the "Pantone" manual, mix your paint colors to create the level of brown you want. While this "Pantone" manual is typically used for mixing inks for printing, you can use magenta, cyan, black, and yellow paints to create the perfect brown hue for your needs.
Tips
- Even with regular brown paint, you can keep mixing it with other hues until you get the perfect level of brown to your liking.
- Unless you measure your brown mix to the exact right percentage, it's actually not possible to create the same level of color twice through the color mixing process. If you intend to use a fair amount of brown, start mixing in large amounts of paint so you don't run out of brown in the middle of the job.
- Before you start mixing colors, make sure that your brushes are clean. Otherwise, the slightest bit of other unwanted colors can stain your mix.
Related article
- Mixing Colors
- Making Brown from Color‐Primary Color
