The “Magic Palette Method”!

In this lesson I’d like to show you how to get the best out of your color mixing and how to make amazing bright color mixes with your watercolors. 

Not all watercolor paints are the same. You might think that yellow is yellow, and blue is blue. But pigments used in watercolor paints have characteristics which affect the appearance of the final mixed color.

Let’s start with the basics.

It’s generally understood that you can mix any color using just three primary colors:

  • Yellow
  • Blue
  • Red
primary colors in watercolor

These are known as primary colors because you cannot mix them using any other color combinations. You just can’t… If you only have yellowish and bluish hues in your palette you’ll never be able to mix red.

So you’re probably saying to yourself “great” all I need is three tubes of paint and I can mix any kind of color I want.

Wrong

I remember learning this after a great amount of frustration trying to mix nice bright greens. No matter what I did I just couldn’t produce the color I wanted!

This is because all watercolor paints are based on pigments which have a distinct color bias. For example, “Lemon Yellow” is a little bit greenish (therefore it has a cool bias). And “Hansa Yellow Deep” has a bit of red in it (this gives it a warm bias).

We say that Lemon Yellow is a cool hue, and Hansa Yellow is warm.

Tips & Tricks: The notion of warm and cool colors is important to this story. Color temperature can most easily be understood with the help of a color wheel. Warm colors are those that tend towards red and orange, whereas cool colors are those that tend towards blue and green.

warm vs cool colors

Now let’s go back to our tubes of yellow and blue paint. For example, if you try to mix a warm yellow with a warm blue, there is NO WAY you will end up with a bright vivid green! Mixing these two warm paints produces a toned down earthy green color, not an intense green.

So why is this?

The color appearance of the mixed paint depends on the color temperature of the pigments being used.

So how the heck do you figure out which combinations of paint to use to achieve a desired color?

If you read my first lesson then you’ve probably already guessed the answer.

You need to start with a range of both warm and cool primary colors. In other words, a warm and cool version of each primary color. That’s a minimum of six paints. Here’s an example:

Many of you have asked me to share exactly what paints I would recommend. I use Daniel Smith watercolors which are my favorite brand 🙂. So here’s an example of 6 warm and cool paints like the ones above:

The Magic of the Split Primary Color Palette

This collection of six primary colors is referred to as a split primary palette. Using a split primary color palette is a principle that makes a fundamental difference between dull muddy color mixing and bright lively colors!

Tips & Tricks: The term “split primary” refers to the idea that each primary color is split into both warm and cool versions. 

But it’s even better than that! If you want to be able to mix the widest possible range of different colors, having six warm and cool primary colors in your mixing palette is the best way to achieve this (unless of course you fancy buying every possible tube of paint available).

Don’t worry. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing when I first started mixing paints. Worse than that, I had no idea which paints I should choose to begin with. But now I’m going to show you a quick and handy reference tool you can use to help you mix any color you want. 

It’s called a split primary color wheel. 

In a nutshell, this color wheel shows you how to mix intensely bright greens, purples and oranges, (also known as secondary colors) and when you understand the theory, you can also mix any muted or earthy versions of these secondary colors.

A split primary color wheel is set up in the following way. You start by arranging the six cool and warm primaries as follows:

Then you mix together the two primary colors that are closest to each other on the wheel, which produces the secondary colors green, purple, and blue. The result of these combinations is a range of brightly saturated secondary colors. 

So the magic formulas for mixing bright secondary colors are:

Cool yellow + cool blue = pure green

Warm blue + cool red = pure purple

Warm red + warm yellow = pure orange

Then, next to each secondary color you can see I’ve mixed the tertiary colors. Yes… You guessed it. These are the color mixtures that sit between the primary and secondary colors on the color wheel. So the hue “yellow-green” sits between cool yellow and green, etc.

Now let’s take another look at the color wheel. Each primary color is split into two versions, right? Warm, and cool… These split lines divide the wheel nicely into three sections, or thirds.

If you try mixing across the split lines, from one section to another, this results in a muted or toned-down version of the intended color. Like in the example earlier, a warm yellow mixed with warm blue results in a muted green, because these two colors cross the boundaries of the split lines.

Get it !?

The benefit of this mixing palette is that you can very easily mix a full spectrum of colors. Also mixing with a split primary color wheel will naturally train you how to mix intense vivid colors or subdued muted hues, according to what you need!

Isn’t that great?

And on top of that, (like I already said), you probably just saved a lot of money on tubes of paint !

Whew !

Hopefully you should now feel better equipped to get the best out of your color mixing. Good color mixing and the proper use of color is obviously one of the essential parts of successful painting. Remember to use a split primary color wheel as a mixing reference. You can download this PDF here… Or better still, make one of your own!

Thanks for reading !

Anthony

Tell me about your watercolor struggles or what’s holding you back in the comments below and I’ll personally give you some guidance 🙂

P.S. (IMPORTANT) If you enjoyed this and want more I strongly suggest you “whitelist” my email address (which is [email protected]). If you need help to do this, read this page…

26 Comments

  1. Thank you for you free lessons, Antony. I thought you were a great teacher just by listening to your soothing voice on one of your you tube videos.
    Regards Angelinka

  2. How to identify warm or cool temperature for below colours? what could be their substitutes? Raw Sienna, Red Quinacridone, Transparent Oxide Red, Blue Violet, Mauve Pyrrol Orange , French Ultramarine, Azometrine Green Yellow, Lamp Black

    1. Hi!
      I have a helpful article HERE about matching colors between brands if you’d like to explore that further.
      That said, Just a quick note – I’d suggest revisiting the concept of this lesson because using lamp black might take you away from the wonderful possibilities of mixing your own neutral grays and rich darks with the split primary palette. It’s a fantastic skill that gives you so much more control and harmony in your paintings.
      Have fun!

  3. To tell you the truth I have two major problems. The first is finding an instructor that teaches watercolor (I know there are many and I have learned a bit from the ones I have come across but so much I learned on my own so it has been frustrating. The second is the paint to water ratio to be used while I am painting. When following a lesson the teachers I have found never explain or show when they are adding water so that has been a bit frustrating. There are a million little things like being told that with watercolor you cannot paint light over dark yet I have done it. I recently painted orange on top of a black house. I absolutely love watercolor and so want to learn more about this medium. It has been a long journey for me to learn about pigments and their importance, but I had not learned about not mixing warm with warm yet so there are big holes in what I have learned.

    1. Hi Zoie
      Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I understand the challenges you’ve faced, especially with finding the right instruction and mastering that tricky paint-to-water ratio. These are both common hurdles for many watercolorists, and you’re not alone in feeling that frustration.
      Water control is something I place a lot of focus on in my classes because it’s often glossed over yet so essential.
      For water-to-paint ratios might I suggest you simplify things to avoid overthinking … For example, use just 3 paint consistencies (light, mid-strength, and dark) to approach your paintings…
      All the best 🙂

  4. Dear Anthony,

    Thank you for your free guide to the world of the split primary colour palette. This provides a superb, clear and concise explanation for someone just starting out on their watercolour journey. Well done!

    Best
    Antony

      1. This is great information.. One question I have though is how do you know what is a warm colour and what is a cool. For example my Windsor and Newton paints have 2 or 3 yellows – I have no idea what is a warm and what is a cool yellow.

    1. It seemed you used Lemon Yellow as a cool color, but it’s listed as warm in the DS spreadsheet. That confuses me a bit.

      1. Hi Judith
        I can see how that might be confusing. On the DS spreadsheet, they list yellow as a ‘warm color’ because yellow is generally seen as a warm hue. However, within the yellow family, there are both warm and cool versions. Lemon Yellow has a cooler bias because it leans slightly toward green, whereas a warmer yellow, like Hansa Yellow Deep, leans more toward orange. So Lemon Yellow is a cool yellow, because of its slight greenish tint, which makes it ‘cooler’ compared to other yellows. Hope that clears things up!
        (p.s. the DS document is misleading because it labels all colors that way!)

  5. Hi I am new to color mixing.
    The way you explain that is just wow 👌
    A great thanks to you for sharing this 😀
    🙏🙏🙏

  6. I have studied other color wheels; some were very confusing. So I figured out the split color wheel myself…sort of. It took many hours of paint mixing to “get it”. I don’t regret the practice, but could have moved on more quickly if I had your explanation then. I still practice mixing with each new color I buy before using it in a painting. Now, I know why the split works every time. Thank you!

    1. Happy to help Rebecca 🙂
      Yes… mixing your new paints is an excellent way to discover new mixing possibilities …

  7. Hi dear Anthony thank you for your valuable information about colors.I like it and learn a lot .
    The best

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