THE FIRST SKILL EVERY BEGINNER MUST KNOW IS THE MIXING SKILL…
And this doesn't just include how to mix your colors but also how to dilute your paints with water.
DILUTING YOUR PAINTS
THE FIVE STARTING RATIOS – There are a number of ways to mix your water and paint – but over the years i’ve found most paint to water ratios start in 5 stages – No Water, Chunky, Inky, Milky, and finally Watery.
I have a whole course that breaks this concept down – but in summary the three most common paint ratios watercolorist use is the inky, milky, and watery paint to water ratios.
UNDERSTANDING COLOR INTENSITY
The next step to the mixing skill is that of learning how to mix two or more colors. The way we do this is by first evaluating which color is the more intense or what I like to refer to as the bully colors. This color will dominate other colors when mixing. For this illustration – boy bully color is my black ink which could easily over power my soft purple. Since i want more of a gray color for my bunny – I need to first dilute my dominate color and then slowly add in my purple to tint my mixture. Once you have your color mixture down – it’s time to move on to our next crucial skill…