From the article: Why Am I Mixing Mud Colors?
What tips do you have to avoid ending up with a horrible mud color when you're mixing your paints? Are there any colors you avoid mixing together? Do you have a standard of set of colors you use that you know won't produce mud? Share Your Anti-Mud Tips
No-Mud Mixing
- I use my split-primary color-mixing system for no-mud mixing. www.nitaleland.com/articles/split.htm
- —Guest Nita Leland
Avoiding Mud
- My general suggestion is that if you are getting mud you should work from higher chroma (more intense color) than you intend, and then tone it down, rather than mixing a lot of low chroma colors that are getting rather forlorn and hope to perk it up, especially if you are working wet on wet. Also if you want to avoid starting out white, and routinely tone your canvas, try something warm and bright rather than dark. If your style will permit it, consider scumbling and mixing colors optically. If you blend, try to keep it to colors adjacent on the color wheel.
- —edsmiley
Simple Rule
- Really simple rule for that. If you are mixing more than three colors, it's mud. Now, obviously it isn't that simple, but if you follow that as a general guideline, should be fine.
- —itastepaint
avoiding mud
- I mix only primary colours. usually only two then darken with black or lighten with white.
- —sarahlynette
Making beautiful greys out of mud.
- You can add white to mud to get a range of lovely greys.
- —Guest Angela
Avoiding mixing mud
- From a purely practical perspective, I would advise simplifying your palette. It's a fact that you can mix any colour (including black) from the three primaries. My advice would be to limit your colours to just Pthalo blue, cadmium yellow light and magenta, plus white. Play with mixing using just these three colours for a while and make some colour wheels/charts... it's tricky at first, but great fun and a fantastic way to learn about colour. Once you've mastered using this limited palette, you can add some "convenience colours" such as, say, yellow ochre, ultrmarine blue or a green. However, even then, one must be careful when mixing. You'll be surpised at how vibrant and fresh your colour becomes when you can work in this way. As a final benefit, since primaries are usually among the cheaper paints in most media, and you'll be able to buy larger quantities, you'll save money too.
- —John.houston
Analagous colors
- I often stick to using analagous colors (next to each other on the color wheel), so that if they do mix, it doesn't turn to brown or grey. If I really need a different accent color in acrylic, I'll wait for things do dry a bit first so there's no mixing.
- —BEARC
Layering
- I know this problem! Sometimes there are a few colours I have just got to have together, but time on time they murk up on me. I've solved this artistic riddle by not blending them straight, but layering them, use the strongest colour first. Let it dry, then cover with a thinned version of the other(s) so colour no.1 shines through and you get some optical mixing rather than mud-on-the-palette syndrome. Golds, especially, go well and are very subtle on top.
- —Guest Varks
Rule of Two
- I have a rule of two: I only ever mix two colors together then on a painting if it's not right or what I need then I add a strong color on top. Works for me!!
- —Guest Josie
