<p>When I started painting, I owned fourteen tubes of watercolour and somehow couldn't mix the grey I wanted. Now I own eight. The palette got smaller. The mixing got better. That's not a coincidence.</p>
<h2>Why Fewer Colours Mix Better</h2>
<p>Watercolour pigments are semi-transparent. When you mix three pigments together, each one is fighting the others for visual dominance. The more pigments you pile in, the more you trend toward muddy brown-grey — not because you're doing anything wrong, but because that's what mixed pigments do.</p>
<p>The cleanest mixes come from two colours. Sometimes three, if one is very dilute. This is why a limited palette — six to eight colours — produces cleaner, more harmonious work than a palette of twenty.</p>
<h2>The Six Colours I Actually Use</h2>
<p>My working palette for landscapes:</p>
<ul> <li><strong>French Ultramarine</strong> — the workhorse blue. Granulates beautifully. Makes purples with Quinacridone Magenta, rich darks with Burnt Sienna.</li> <li><strong>Cerulean Blue</strong> — clean sky blue, won't go purple. Use it where you want clear, cool light.</li> <li><strong>Quinacridone Magenta</strong> — the most versatile pink. Mixes to clean violets, warm reds, and surprisingly subtle flesh tones.</li> <li><strong>New Gamboge</strong> — a warm yellow that leans orange. Greens made from this feel warm and natural rather than acidic.</li> <li><strong>Lemon Yellow (Hansa)</strong> — a cool, slightly acid yellow. Mixes cooler, cleaner greens. Also useful for early morning light.</li> <li><strong>Burnt Sienna</strong> — the most useful brown on earth. Mixed with Ultramarine it makes a full range of greys and darks. On its own it's the colour of brick, autumn leaves, warm shadows.</li> </ul>
<p>That's it. Six colours. You can mix almost anything from these six if you understand temperature and pigment bias.</p>
<h2>Colour Temperature: The Most Important Concept in Mixing</h2>
<p>Every colour has a temperature bias — it leans warm (toward orange/yellow) or cool (toward blue/green). This matters enormously when mixing.</p>
<p>The rule: <strong>if you mix a warm and a cool version of the same hue, you get cleaner results than mixing two colours that both lean the same way</strong>.</p>
<p>Example: Ultramarine (warm blue, leans violet) + Lemon Yellow (cool yellow, leans green) = a cooler, slightly grey-green.<br> Ultramarine + New Gamboge (warm yellow) = a warmer, richer olive green.</p>
<p>Neither is right or wrong. But knowing which you're reaching for — warm or cool — is the difference between accidentally muddy and intentionally subtle.</p>
<h2>How to Mix Clean Greens</h2>
<p>This is the question I get asked most at workshops. Watercolour tube greens (Viridian, Sap Green, Hooker's) are useful but rigid — they go everywhere at full strength. Mixing your own greens gives you control.</p>
<p>Starting point: Yellow + Blue. Then adjust:</p>
<ul> <li><strong>More yellow</strong> → lighter, more spring-like</li> <li><strong>More blue</strong> → darker, colder, receding</li> <li><strong>Add a touch of Burnt Sienna</strong> → immediately more natural, less raw</li> <li><strong>Use Cerulean not Ultramarine</strong> → cleaner, cooler green (Ultramarine greens tend toward khaki)</li> </ul>
<p>The greens in my landscapes are almost never straight from a tube. They're always mixed — often from three colours — because nature's greens are complex and varied.</p>
<h2>How to Mix Greys Without a Grey Tube</h2>
<p>Payne's Grey is a fine colour but it deadens everything it touches. I haven't used it in years.</p>
<p>Ultramarine + Burnt Sienna, in varying ratios, gives you a complete range of warm-to-cool greys:</p>
<ul> <li><strong>More Ultramarine</strong> → cool, bluish grey (perfect for shadow in clear light)</li> <li><strong>Equal parts</strong> → neutral grey, very useful for overcast skies</li> <li><strong>More Burnt Sienna</strong> → warm grey, like weathered wood or old stone</li> </ul>
<p>These mixed greys also harmonise naturally with the rest of your palette — because they're built from colours already in your painting.</p>
<h2>The Muddy Colour Problem</h2>
<p>Muddy colour usually has one of three causes:</p>
<ol> <li><strong>Too many pigments</strong> — more than three in one mix</li> <li><strong>Mixing on a dirty palette</strong> — old dry paint contaminating fresh mixes</li> <li><strong>Overworking a wet wash</strong> — going back into a drying wash disturbs the pigment particles and creates irregular dark edges and muddy patches</li> </ol>
<p>The fix for all three is the same: patience and discipline. Mix on a clean part of your palette. Use two colours. Let washes dry before adding another layer.</p>
<h2>A Practical Mixing Exercise</h2>
<p>Take your six colours and make every possible two-colour combination on a test sheet. Label each one. You'll end up with something like fifteen swatches — and you'll know, from direct experience, exactly what each pair produces. That knowledge is worth more than any colour theory lecture.</p>
<p>I did this exercise when I first reduced my palette. It took an afternoon. It completely changed how I mixed.</p>
<h2>One More Thing</h2>
<p>Buy artist-quality, not student-quality, if you possibly can. Student paints use less pigment and more filler. The colours are duller, they granulate less beautifully, and they mix differently. Winsor & Newton Professional and Daniel Smith are the benchmarks I use. Six artist-quality colours will serve you better than fourteen student ones.</p>
<p>If you want to practise colour mixing in a structured, supportive environment, that's exactly what my workshops are for — <a href="/workshops">see current workshop dates here</a>.</p>
