Reference
The color mixing chart that actually behaves like paint.
Most colour wheels online mix light, not pigment. That is why yellow and blue come out grey on a screen and green on your palette. Every swatch below is computed with a Kubelka-Munk pigment model using real tube data, so what you see is close to what your brush will do.
Mix two tubes
The paint mixing chart
Every cell is an even 50/50 mix of the tube in its row and the tube in its column. Tap a cell to load that pair into the mixer above. Print the page for a chart you can pin next to your easel.
| Mix | CY | CR | QM | UB | PB | PG | BS | YO | IB | TW |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cadmium Yellow | ||||||||||
| Cadmium Red | ||||||||||
| Quinacridone Magenta | ||||||||||
| Ultramarine Blue | ||||||||||
| Phthalo Blue | ||||||||||
| Phthalo Green | ||||||||||
| Burnt Sienna | ||||||||||
| Yellow Ochre | ||||||||||
| Ivory Black | ||||||||||
| Titanium White |
How to read it
Primaries into secondaries. Cadmium Yellow with Ultramarine gives a soft olive green, not a bright one. For a clean green you want Phthalo Blue or Phthalo Green, because Ultramarine carries a red bias that dulls the mix.
Tertiaries and neutrals. Any pair sitting opposite each other on the wheel walks towards grey. That is the fastest honest way to knock back a colour that is too loud, and it beats reaching for black.
Value before hue. White does not only lighten, it cools and reduces chroma. Add it last and in small amounts, since a mix that looks right wet can read chalky once it dries.
Your tubes are not these tubes. A chart is a starting point. If you want the exact ratio for a specific target colour in your own brand and medium, the mixer does that properly.
Skip the guesswork
Pick any colour, choose your brand and medium, and get the tubes and parts.