Advanced Paint Color Mixing Recipes for Kids: Beyond the Color Wheel

Kids, you already know how to make a six-color color wheel.

You know that red, yellow and blue and blue are the primary colors. You also know that mixing two of those colors will make a brand new color.

Cool, right?

But what about those colors that are not so obvious to make?

There are couple of ways that kids and artists explore paint recipes.

One way is to experiment. Try mixing different colors to see what you get.

Sometimes you keep making brown by accident. Or, you can't get the new colors to look the right way. You might need some mixing recipes.

Advanced Paint Color Mixing Recipes for Kids

1. Making colors darker

You might think that adding black to any color will make it darker. What usually happens is that the color instead turns into black. Black is a very strong color, and takes over, you might say.

If you use black, you also have to add other colors, to get the mix just right. This can be hard for beginners.

So how do you make colors darker without using black?

You need to add a small amount of the opposite.

Pull out your wheel, and it is easy to find a color's opposite.

The opposite of blue is orange. To make either color darker, like you might want to for a shadow, add a dab of its opposite. Start with very little and add more to darken.

This works great with watercolor paints.

2. Making colors lighter

One way to make colors lighter is to add white paint. Add very little white paint or it will overtake the color. White is strong, like black.

Some of your favorite colors can be made with mixing recipes using white. Here are some advanced color mixing recipes for kids' paper crafts:

Red + White = Pink
Purple (red + blue) + White = Lilac
Orange (red + yellow) + White = Peach
Black + White = Gray
Green + White = Mint Green
Blue + White = Sky Blue
Yellow + White = Pale Yellow

3. Creative Combinations: Primary + Secondary

Adding equal amounts of a primary color (red, blue or yellow) with a secondary one (purple, green or orange) can make some neat mixing recipes.

Try mixing these colors, using the wheel as a guide for these recipes:

Blue + Green = Turquoise
Red + Green + Blue = Brown
Orange + Red = Red-Orange
Purple + Red = Fuschia
Brown + Black = Dark Brown