I have realised by watching the journal girl video yesterday, which is brill by the way and you just have to watch, that a few art journalers really do not know how to mix colours.So it is high time for a crashcourse.All this info is from my own brain, so sorry if its formulated in a weird way.
Above you can see the cover of my current handmade art journal.It is a colour wheel.You probably know that red, blue and yellow are prime colours.This means that you cannot mix them.Therefore they are basic colours!White and black are also basic colours, so you will need these okay?Now look at the colour wheel now can you see that between the yellow and the red there is orange?Good, this means that if you mix yellow and red together you will get orange.Between the red and the blue there is purple, so if you mix blue and red you get purple.Lastly between the blue and the yellow you can see green, so blue and yellow makes green.
There. Now you know the absolute basics to colour mixing.I recommend you try all this out for yourself though, to get the feel for it.Now lets take the example of mixing red and yellow(=yellow) If you mix these in a 1:1 ratio you will get a pretty basic orange.If you put in more red than yellow, your orange will be a bit more redish.If you put in more yellow, it will be yellowisher(is that a word?!).This can be fun to play with.This is the same for all the colour combos, i talked about above.
If you mix all the colours together you will get brown.But you also get brown when you mix red, black and yellow in the ratio(roughly)2:2:1.Black and white cannot be mixed.If you add black to a colour it will go browny or greyish depending on the colour.Normally you only add a tiny, tiny bit of black to your colour mixing.If you mix black and white together you will get grey.Again the more white used the lighter the colour will be.The more black you use, the darker it will be.If you add white to colours they will get lighter but also go kinda paleish.So if you have blue and add white it will become a more baby blue.
Pink can be mixed by adding white to red, though if you want a magenta colour, i would buy this to as it can be very hard to mix.Basiclly when mixing if you add a colour the mixed colour will become more like that colour.Do you get me?
Lastly if you really want a colour to pop out, then pick say red and then take the colour that is across in the colour wheel so blue or green.
Thats my basic colour mixing crash course.Now just experiment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
