Inspiring examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting

Real-world examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting

Let’s start where most artists actually learn: by seeing how other painters do it. Here are several real examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting that show up again and again in studios, classrooms, and online tutorials.

One common example of color mixing is building a believable sky with just three tubes: ultramarine blue, titanium white, and a touch of burnt sienna. Many landscape painters mix ultramarine with white for the upper sky, then gradually add more white and a tiny bit of yellow to warm the color near the horizon. A hint of burnt sienna softens the blue so it doesn’t look cartoonish. This is a simple but powerful example of controlling temperature and value with mixing, not just picking a premade sky blue.

Another everyday example of color mixing is creating natural-looking greens for trees and grass. Instead of using a tube green, artists often mix ultramarine blue with cadmium yellow medium for a deep, forest green, then adjust it with yellow ochre for sunlit leaves or a touch of alizarin crimson for shadowed foliage. This gives you a whole range of greens that feel like they belong in the same environment, instead of random, disconnected patches of color.

Portrait artists have their own favorite examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting. A common approach is to mix a base skin tone from yellow ochre, cadmium red (or a similar warm red), and titanium white, then adjust it with ultramarine blue or burnt umber for shadows. For cooler indoor light, painters might lean on more blue and less red; for warm outdoor light, they’ll push the mixture toward yellow and red. These small shifts in mixing can completely change the mood of a face.

Primary, secondary, and tertiary mixing: practical examples

Color theory sounds academic until you watch it happen on your palette. Here are concrete examples of how primary, secondary, and tertiary mixing actually shows up in acrylic painting.

When you mix primaries, you’re usually aiming for clean secondary colors. For example, mixing a warm red (like cadmium red) with a warm yellow (like cadmium yellow) gives you a vivid orange that’s perfect for sunsets or autumn leaves. Mixing a cool blue (phthalo blue) with a cool yellow (Hansa yellow) can give you a bright, spring-like green. These are some of the best examples of how choosing the right temperature of each primary can keep your mixed colors bright instead of muddy.

Secondary mixing moves you into more nuanced territory. Say you’ve mixed that bright green from phthalo blue and Hansa yellow. You can nudge it toward a more natural, olive green by adding a small amount of its complement—red. This doesn’t mean turning it brown; just a hint of red knocks down the intensity. Landscape painters rely on this example of complementary mixing constantly to keep their greens from screaming off the canvas.

Tertiary mixing is where you start to create those subtle in-between colors that make a painting feel sophisticated. For instance, you might mix a red-violet by combining magenta and ultramarine blue, then soften it with a little yellow ochre to create a muted mauve for distant mountains. That’s a real example of using tertiary mixing to get atmospheric perspective: cooler, grayer colors recede, warmer, more intense colors come forward.

If you’d like a refresher on color wheel relationships, the free resources from many art schools and museums can help reinforce what you’re doing in the studio. For instance, the National Gallery of Art offers teacher resources that include color activities you can adapt to your own practice.

Layering vs. direct mixing: examples include glazing and scumbling

Not all mixing happens on the palette. Some of the most interesting examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting happen right on the canvas through layering.

Glazing is a classic example. You start with a dry, opaque layer—say, a dull red-brown underpainting for a still life. Then you brush a very thin, transparent layer of color over it, such as a diluted alizarin crimson mixed with glazing medium. The two colors visually mix in your eye, not physically on the palette. Painters use this to create depth in glass, fruit, and fabric. For instance, a green apple might start as a flat mid-green, then get glazed with warmer yellow-greens on the lit side and cooler blue-greens in the shadow. Each glaze slightly shifts the perceived color without burying the layers beneath.

Scumbling is another example of layered mixing, but with a dry, broken application. Imagine you have a dark, bluish-gray background. You load a stiff brush with a small amount of light, warm gray and drag it lightly across the surface so the texture catches the paint. The dark color shows through in spots, and your eye averages them together. This is a practical example of using scumbling to suggest mist, aged walls, or textured stone.

In 2024–2025, many acrylic painters combine traditional glazing with modern acrylic mediums designed for extended open time and transparency. Brands have released slow-drying acrylics and specialized glazing mediums that make it easier to achieve these layered effects without racing the clock. Checking manufacturer technical sheets or educational pages, such as those from university art departments like University of North Carolina’s art resources can give you updated guidance on which products support different mixing methods.

Limited palette strategies: modern examples artists actually use

A powerful way to improve your mixing skills is to restrict yourself. Limited palettes force you to learn how far a few colors can go. Here are some real examples of limited palette color mixing techniques in acrylic painting that artists are using right now.

A common modern choice is a split-primary palette: a warm and cool version of each primary, plus white. For example, you might use cadmium yellow medium (warm) and Hansa yellow light (cool), cadmium red medium (warm) and quinacridone magenta (cool), ultramarine blue (warm) and phthalo blue (cool), plus titanium white. Painters use this setup to mix nearly any color they need, from muted earth tones to high-chroma accents, without buying dozens of tubes.

Another popular example is the Zorn-inspired palette, adapted for acrylics. Traditionally associated with oil painting, it uses yellow ochre, a red (often cadmium red or a similar hue), black, and white. Acrylic painters in 2024 are still using this approach for portraits and interiors because it forces you to focus on value and temperature instead of chasing every possible color. Black and yellow ochre can even mix into surprisingly convincing greens for muted backgrounds.

On social platforms and in online classes, artists often show time-lapse videos of entire paintings created from four or five colors. These demonstrations are some of the best examples of how limited palettes improve mixing confidence. You watch them mix every shadow and highlight from the same small set of paints, and the finished piece has a built-in color harmony that’s hard to fake with a crowded palette.

If you want structured exercises, art education sites such as RISD’s resources and other college art libraries often point to color studies and limited-palette drills that translate easily to acrylic.

Controlling value and temperature: subtle examples that change everything

Color mixing isn’t just “red plus blue equals purple.” The best examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting always involve value (lightness/darkness) and temperature (warmth/coolness).

For value, imagine painting a white mug on a table. You might think you need pure white for the mug, but in practice, most painters mix a range of grays and off-whites. They’ll start with titanium white and a tiny bit of ultramarine blue and burnt umber to create a cool, neutral gray for the shadow side. Then they’ll use a warmer, slightly lighter mix (white plus a touch of yellow ochre) for the lit side. The purest white is reserved for the brightest highlight only. This is a concrete example of mixing value steps instead of relying on black and white alone.

Temperature control shows up clearly in skin tones. Take a portrait lit from one side by a window. Painters often mix warmer colors (more yellow and red) on the lit side of the face and cooler mixtures (more blue or green in the mix) in the shadows. For example, a cheek in light might be a mix of yellow ochre, cadmium red, and white, while the shadow under the jaw might be that same mix cooled down with ultramarine blue and a touch of green. The colors are related, but the temperature shift makes the form turn convincingly.

Modern artists frequently use digital tools to study temperature. Many will snap a photo of their work in progress and use a color picker in a free app to see how warm or cool certain areas really are. Then they go back to the palette and adjust their mixes. This blending of traditional mixing with digital analysis is one of the more interesting 2024 examples of how painters refine color decisions.

For a deeper science-based understanding of how our eyes perceive color and contrast, resources from organizations like the National Institutes of Health can give you background on color perception that might explain why some mixes read differently to different viewers.

Avoiding muddy colors: examples of smart neutral mixing

Every painter has experienced the dreaded mud. The good news is that many examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting show how to use neutrals intentionally instead of accidentally.

One smart example: instead of mixing every shadow with black, artists often mix complementary colors to get rich, controlled darks. For instance, mix ultramarine blue with burnt sienna to get a deep, near-black neutral that still has life in it. By adjusting the ratio, you can lean it slightly warmer or cooler. This mixture works beautifully for cast shadows, dark hair, and night skies.

Another example involves adjusting saturation without killing a color. Say your bright cadmium orange is too intense for a background. Instead of adding gray or black, you can mix in a small amount of its complement (a blue) to quiet it down. The color stays related to your original orange but sits back in space instead of jumping forward.

Many artists keep a “mud pile” on the palette: a spot where all the leftover mixes accumulate. Instead of tossing it, they use it to create cohesive grays and browns that unify the painting. A touch of this neutral mixed into multiple areas can tie the whole piece together. This is a practical, real example of turning accidental mixes into a deliberate color strategy.

FAQ: examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting

Q: What are some basic examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting for beginners?
Beginner-friendly examples include mixing primary colors to create secondary colors (like blue and yellow for green), lightening colors with white instead of using premixed tints, and creating simple neutrals by mixing a color with its complement (such as red with green). Practicing small color charts where you gradually add more of one color to another is an easy way to build confidence.

Q: Can you give an example of using glazing as a color mixing technique?
Yes. Suppose you paint a solid, flat blue ocean. Once it’s dry, you can glaze a thin layer of turquoise over the shallow areas and a darker blue glaze over the deeper sections. Your eye mixes the underlayer and glaze together, so the water suddenly looks more varied and realistic without repainting everything.

Q: What are the best examples of limited palette color mixing for portraits?
A popular example is using yellow ochre, a warm red, ultramarine blue, and white. From those four colors, you can mix a wide range of skin tones by shifting the balance: more yellow for warmer skin, more blue for cooler shadows, and more red for blush and lips. Many portrait painters share demonstrations of this approach in workshops and online classes.

Q: How do I use real examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting to practice on my own?
Pick a small reference image—a simple apple, a mug, or a cloud—and challenge yourself to mix every color from a limited set of paints. Keep a scrap of paper or canvas next to you and test each mix before you commit it to the painting. Label your mixes as you go. Over time, you’ll build your own library of examples you can refer back to.

Q: Are there examples of color mixing exercises recommended by art schools?
Many art programs suggest exercises like value scales (mixing a color from dark to light in 7–9 steps), color wheels made from your actual paints, and complementary color charts. University and museum education pages, such as the National Gallery of Art’s teacher resources, often share lesson plans that you can adapt to acrylic painting practice at home.

The more you pay attention to these real examples of color mixing techniques in acrylic painting—whether in your own work, in tutorials, or in museum paintings—the faster your instincts develop. Mix often, make notes, and treat every painting as another chance to experiment with what color can do.