How to Mix Colors to Get Vibrant Shades
- 1). Use only as much water as is necessary to get the colors to mix. Adding extra water will give you lighter, less vibrant shades.
- 2). Combine only paints that are no further than a third apart from each other on the color wheel. Most watercolors are biased toward a related shade; mix colors that share a bias. Orange-biased red and orange-biased yellow, when mixed, will give you a much brighter orange than violet-biased red and green-biased yellow.
- 3). Never mix more than two colors of paint if you're aiming for the brightest shades possible. The introduction of a third color inevitably gives the mixture a complexity that provides a greyish tint, detracting from its vibrancy.