Colour Mixing
You don't need twenty tubes — you need to understand a few reliable principles
The essential shadow pair
Ultramarine blue + quinacridone sienna — this combination appears throughout Renee's lessons as a versatile, reliable shadow mix. The two pigments granulate together, creating natural texture as they dry.
Shift the ratio depending on what you need: more blue for cool, sky-lit shadow areas; more sienna where warm reflected colour enters. Used thick with little water, this mix approaches near-black for the darkest accents.
Mixing natural greens
The most common question: how to mix greens that don't look artificial. The short answer — vary them. A single flat green reads as wrong. Multiple greens, varied in warmth and saturation, read as real.
Four ways to make green
- Straight from the tube — sap green or green gold for consistency in non-focal areas
- Mixed on the palette — blue + yellow (ultramarine + hansa yellow medium)
- Charged on the page — lay blue, drop yellow into the wet wash for maximum variation
- Glazing — wash of yellow, dry completely, glaze blue on top
Dulling greens that look too vivid
- Sap green + burnt sienna → earthy, warm green
- Any green + permanent violet → complex, deep natural tone
- Any green + its complement → muted, naturalistic
Granulation
Granulation happens when heavy pigment particles settle into the paper's dimples while finer particles float, creating visual texture as the paint dries. Working very wet enhances it.
Colours that granulate well
- Ultramarine blue — a classic heavy granulator
- Cobalt blue — softer, rounder granulation
- Mixing ultramarine with a fine pigment (quinacridone sienna, pyrrole red) produces beautiful separation — the heavy ultramarine sinks while the fine pigment floats
When to use it
Background mountains, stormy skies, stone and rock textures, misty forests — anywhere that natural texture enhances the subject. Avoid it in clean, luminous flower petals where you want smooth transparency.
Warm vs cool temperature
Every scene has a temperature — the light source defines it. A sunny day is warm; overcast or stormy is cool. Shadows are typically the opposite temperature to the light.
Sunny day painting
- Sunlit surfaces: warm yellows, natural sienna, quinacridone gold
- Shadows: lean cool — more blue in the ultramarine/sienna mix
- Snow in sun: shadows are distinctly blue-violet, sunlit areas cream-white
Overcast / stormy painting
- Everything shifts cooler — cobalt blue, permanent violet, cool greys
- Shadows are subtler — less contrast, softer edges
- Reserve warm colour for the focal point to draw the eye
Background always cooler than foreground
Aerial perspective means distant objects are cooler, less saturated, and lighter than foreground objects. This is the single most reliable tool for creating depth.