The goal of this article is simple: to help you gain more control and confidence when mixing and creating colors in your paintings.
BTW: This Procedure works for both Oil Colors and Acrylics!
Are you trying to achieve realism with your painting?
Many artists, especially in the early stages of their journey, run into the same problem: mixing colors accurately.
With thousands of paints available in stores, I completely understand the confusion (and the frustration). If you’ve ever ended up with a palette full of dull, muddy, or simply “wrong” colors, you know exactly what I mean.
The good news is that this isn’t a lack of talent: it’s usually the result of an unstructured approach to color mixing. The internet is an amazing place: endless videos, endless artists, each with their own method… but is there a simple, reliable system?
Today I want to share a method that gives you much more control over color: separating the process into two distinct phases: value and color (hue and chroma).
Why Colors Become Muddy
Unlike light, which combines additively to produce white, pigments behave in a subtractive way. Each color absorbs certain wavelengths of light and reflects only what remains.
When we mix two pigments, each one absorbs certain parts of the light spectrum. In the mixture, these absorption patterns combine, so even more wavelengths of light get absorbed before anything reaches our eyes. As a result, less light is reflected overall, and the color often loses brightness and saturation, appearing more muted or gray. This is why mixes that seem logical on paper can sometimes end up looking dull in practice.
In painting, we also cannot reproduce the intensity of natural light. For this reason, much of our work revolves around building a range of colored grays, balancing warm and cool variations to create depth and realism.
The Separation Method: Value First, Color After
The core idea is simple: instead of chasing the final color immediately, we separate the process into value and chroma.
1. Establish the Value
The first step is to create a neutral gray that matches the brightness of the color you want to achieve.
Using white and black, you define the correct level of lightness. This gray becomes your reference point and ensures consistency throughout the process.
A key principle emerges immediately:
if the value is wrong, the color will almost never look right.
2. Align the Hue
Next, you mix the target color, for example, combining red and yellow to create a warm orange base often used in skin tones.
Then you adjust it until it matches the same value as the gray you prepared earlier.
In practice, both mixtures must share identical brightness.
3. Control the Saturation
Now comes the most interesting part.
When you mix the gray with the color, the value stays stable because both start from the same brightness level. The only variable that changes is saturation.
This gives you the ability to increase or reduce chroma without disturbing the tonal structure of the painting.
The result is far more precise and predictable color control.
The Secret of Realistic Portraits
When we look at a face, we perceive many subtle color shifts: yellow on the forehead, red on the cheeks, violet tones around the jaw or in the shadows.
Many painters focus too much on these chromatic differences, forgetting that what truly builds form is the relationship between values.
For this reason, this method simplifies portrait painting into five main value groups:
- Main light
- Light midtone
- Dark midtone
- Shadow mass
- Dark accents
Once these levels are established, each area can be colored while maintaining a strong tonal structure.
The Importance of Colored Grays
One of the most powerful insights is that the most compelling painting effects rarely come from pure, saturated colors.
True visual richness comes from subtle variations between warm and cool tones, slightly desaturated colors, and controlled accents.
These “colored grays” are what create volume, depth, and realism.
A realistic skin tone is a complex network of temperature shifts constantly balancing each other.
For this reason, this method simplifies portrait painting into five main value groups:
- Main light
- Light midtone
- Dark midtone
- Shadow mass
- Dark accents
Once these levels are established, each area can be colored while maintaining a strong tonal structure.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Feel free to drop any questions in the comments below.