How to paint a colour chart with six colours – part two

We hope you have completed part one of How to paint a colour chart with six colours. Make sure that you have it to hand when you start painting part two. Download the free template here, and print it out on thick white paper that absorbs water, so you can paint on it.

You can use acrylic or oil paint. You will need the warm primary colours, which are Cadmium Yellow. Cadmium Red and Ultramarine Blue.

You have now filled in the six basic colours. Now we will start mixing them together to see what they produce. Some colours are stronger than others so you have to adjust your ratio.

Step 1. First start with Cadmium Yellow and fill in all the boxes.

Step 2. Clean your brush and carry on with Cadmium Red.

Step 3. Clean your brush again and carry on with Ultramarine Blue.

Step 4. Make sure you have some scrap paper handy to check your colours. Mix a little Cadmium Red in to the Cadmium Yellow to create a light orange.

Step 5. Add a little more Cadmium Red to create a middle orange. You can test your mixed colour on the scrap paper before you apply it to your template.

Step 6. The darkest orange you apply, has to be between the middle orange and the Cadmium Red.

Step 7. Now we are going to use Cadmium Yellow and Ultramarine Blue. When you use Ultramarine Blue be very careful it is very strong and can overtake your colour mix. This is where you get some useful greens.

Step 8. Add a little more Ultramarine Blue to get a middle green, again checking this on your scrap paper.

Step 9. Now add some more Ultramarine Blue to get the last colour, which must be lighter than the end colour, checking your colour on scrap paper.

Step 10. Now for the last row, use Cadmium Red and Ultramarine Blue which must be carefully mixed together. This is where you get some really useful dark colours.

Now you have completed part two of How to paint a colour chart. You can see that by mixing these warm primary colours together, you create a certain type of colours. You will be surprised how different the cool primary colours will turn out when you mix these together. They will be much brighter. Make sure to download the template DAB-colour-chart-part-02a for part three of How to paint a colour chart with six colours and get started on part three.