Mixing guide
How to mix brown
Brown is orange with the light turned down. Once you see it that way it stops being a mystery.
Brown is not a color in its own right. It is a dark, desaturated orange, and every route to it passes through that fact. Red and yellow give you the orange; blue or black takes the light out of it.
That is also why brown is so easy to make badly. Too much blue and it goes gray-purple, too much black and it goes dead, too much red and it reads as rust. The earth colors — burnt sienna, burnt umber, raw umber — exist because they land in the right place straight from the tube.
Knowing how to mix one anyway is worth it, because a mixed brown can be steered exactly where you want it and a tube brown cannot.
The mixtures
Each one worked out on a real palette with the spectral model. The number after the mixture is how far it lands from the target: under 2 you cannot see the difference, under 4 it does not matter in a painting.
Warm mid brown #8B5A34
Wood in light, terracotta, a chestnut horse.
9× Cadmium Yellow Light +3× Alizarin Crimson (permanent) +2× Phthalo Blue
10× Yellow Ochre +2× Ultramarine +1× Indian Red
3× Yellow Ochre +1× Burnt Sienna +1× Burnt Umber
Medium wash, roughly 1 part paint to 1 parts water.
9× Yellow Ochre +2× Ultramarine
Cool dark brown #4A382B
Bark, dark soil, a shadowed beam.
5× Cadmium Yellow Light +2× Ivory Black +1× Alizarin Crimson (permanent)
9× Raw Umber +4× Ultramarine +3× Burnt Umber
5× Burnt Umber +2× Payne’s Gray
Full wash.
1× Ultramarine +1× Yellow Ochre
Light tan #C39C74
Sand, dry grass, pale leather.
6× Titanium White +2× Yellow Ochre +1× Burnt Umber
6× Titanium White +2× Yellow Ochre +1× Burnt Umber
9× Burnt Sienna +6× Yellow Ochre +2× Ultramarine
Very thin wash, roughly 1 part paint to 7 parts water.
1× Yellow Ochre
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
Red-brown #7A3B2A
Roof tiles, brick, rust.
9× Yellow Ochre +8× Cadmium Red Light +4× Phthalo Blue
7× Raw Sienna +1× Indian Red +1× Burnt Umber
9× Yellow Ochre +3× Burnt Umber +1× Quinacridone Rose
Full wash.
9× Yellow Ochre +5× Ultramarine +1× Cadmium Red Light
Worth remembering
- Start with the orange, then take it down. Starting from a dark and trying to warm it up takes far more paint.
- Burnt sienna and ultramarine will make almost any brown you need, and every gray besides.
- For wood and skin, keep a trace of red visible. For soil and bark, let it go cooler.
Your paints, your photo
These mixtures assume the palettes above. Tick off what you actually own and pick the color straight out of your reference instead.