Do you need dark paint to mix dark colors? I no longer think so. One of the magic tricks of color mixing is that you can mix your own dark colors from brights!
My perspective on color mixing has changed since the last time I reported on a summer palette, back in summer 2023. Then, I felt the need to pack dark convenience colors, like Naphthamide Maroon and Payne’s Gray. “Summer is a time of high contrast! Bright light means dark shadows,” I wrote, correctly. And Payne’s Gray was “my favorite quick shortcut to those dark/shadow values that are so essential to creating sunny-day contrast.”
Over time, though, I came to fall out of love with these dark paints.
- They often aren’t my favorite colors (I’m a fan of bright colors).
- They take up room on the palette, but have pretty limited, specific uses. Being able to do without them frees up room on my palette for more bright paints.
- They don’t really get dark enough for me! Often, dark paints have a large amount of drying shift, so you have to paint multiple layers to get a strong, dark color. I often find mixed darks to be darker.
I still believe in the importance of using dark colors in sketches – more so if anything – but I no longer feel that I need those convenience dark paints to be able to mix them. I can mix dark colors using bright paints that I love for other reasons!
My Favorite Color Combinations for Mixing Dark
Let me show you the great dark colors I can mix with just six paints, none of which are particularly dark on their own, and all of which are palette staples for me with tons of other use cases.
- Pyrrol Scarlet
- Perylene Red
- Transparent Red Oxide
- Ultramarine Blue
- Phthalo Blue Green Shade
- Phthalo Green Blue Shade
You might notice the six colors I identified fall naturally into complementary pairs.
- Blue (Ultramarine) + Orange (Transparent Red Oxide)
- Cyan (Phthalo Blue) + Scarlet (Pyrrol Scarlet)
- Green (Phthalo Green) + Red (Perylene Red)
Why no yellow/violet? Mainly because yellow is usually so inherently light-valued that I find it much more difficult to work up dark mixes with paints in the yellow family.
Transparent Red Oxide & Ultramarine Blue
This is a variant of the formula Jane Blundell famously uses in her “Jane’s Grey“: Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue. I’ve long used a similar combination from my core colors – Indanthrone Blue and Transparent Red Oxide. Lately, I’ve been challenging myself to use more Ultramarine Blue because it is was voted color of the year here on the blog! Plus, Ultramarine Blue, being bright, proves my point even more. I love the Ultramarine Blue + TRO combo for making granulating, textured grays and browns.
Pyrrol Scarlet + Phthalo Blue Green Shade
This is a great combo that you can make from paints in the Daniel Smith Essentials starter kit. Pyrrol Scarlet (PR255) and Phthalo Blue Green Shade (PB15:3) are both very strong and nearly complementary, and together they make a super-dark near-black, which you can pull more toward a warm gray-brown or a deep blue depending on the balance.
Perylene Red + Phthalo Green
After experimenting with adding red to green in my reread of Jeanne Dobie’s Making Color Sing chapter on greens, I feel like I really unlocked the use of red for darkening and desaturating green. I used to think you needed Perylene Green to get dark greens. Now, I see how easy it is get dark green from mixing red into Phthalo Green!
Perylene Red + Ultramarine Blue
Dark colors don’t need to be neutral or near-black, and complements aren’t the only pairs that make dark colors. I love this combination for making dark violet, or even a dark violet-blue. The diluted versions are also really pretty lavenders hues.
Pyrrol Scarlet + Phthalo Green
If you want a range of browns to dark greens that stay in a warm zone, you can mix the scarlet with the green.
Alternative Paints
Don’t have the paints I specifically demonstrated? No problem, there are many variations that will work just about the same way.
Blue/Orange Alternatives
For Ultramarine: Indanthrone Blue is my usual Ultramarine alternative and it mixes darks very well as it’s a fairly dark blue to begin with.
Cobalt Blue mixes similarly to Ultramarine, but isn’t as suitable for this purpose because it doesn’t get dark enough.
For TRO: Other earth oranges such as Burnt Sienna, or if you’re not a fan of earthy colors, you might prefer a bright transparent orange such as Transparent Pyrrol Orange (PO71 or DPP).
Light-valued, yellowy, and opaque oranges don’t work as well. I don’t have a lot of luck with Benzimidazolone Orange (PO62), which is too yellow, or Pyrrol Orange (PO73), which is too opaque and doesn’t get dark enough.
Cyan/Scarlet Alternatives
For cyan: Phthalo Turquoise works pretty much identically to Phthalo Blue GS. Phthalo Blue RS is also strong enough to work well, though you may need to opt for a more orangey color to complement it.
Opaque, light-valued cyans like Cerulean and Cobalt Turquoise will not get you there.
For scarlet: Colors with a similar hue to Pyrrol Scarlet work well, such as Naphthol Scarlet (PR188). Napthol Scarlet + Phthalo Turquoise is a great combo.
For some reason I could never get my love Quin Coral (PR209) to work for me in mixing darks; not with any form of cyan or green. They always come out too light. Pyrrol Scarlet has a certain body to it that seems to help.
Red/Green Alternatives
For red: Besides Perylene Red (PR178), Pyrrol Rubin/Crimson (PR264) and Pyrrol Red (PR254) are my favorite reds for modulating green.
A bold middle red to crimson seems to be the key. One reason it took me so long to the unlock green+red combo is that the typical “split complementary” reds, such as the Quin Rose and Pyrrol Scarlet in the DS Essentials kit, never quite did it for me. Quin Rose and Quin Magenta lean too purple, while Pyrrol Scarlet + green makes brown, as seen above.
For green: Both variants of Phthalo Green work similarly, though Phthalo Green Yellow Shade (PG36) may lean more toward a brown. Still a very nice naturalistic dark color.
Conclusion
You don’t need dark paints to mix dark colors, but you do need some well-chosen brights. Not all pairs of bright colors make dark “mud.” Some make more vivid brights – get out of here!!
Generally, it’s easier to work up darks with:
- colors that are far apart from each other on the color wheel (complementary or almost) – more light is blocked due to subtractive color mixing
- colors that are strong (high tinting strength)
- colors that are transparent, since you can make transparent colors darker by continually adding paint, but opaque colors don’t get any darker than masstone.
You also don’t need to limit yourself to just two colors; you can mix three or more! That will make it even easier to mix your desired mud.