How to Avoid Mixing "Mud"

Do you struggle with mixing "muddy" or "chalky" colors?

The first step for clean, vivacious mixtures is realizing that it is more an issue with TEMPERATURE than with color. If your color looks muddy or chalky, it is because it is too cool or warm compared to the surrounding colors.

So what exactly does "warm" and "cool" mean, anyway? There are 3 factors that determine whether a color is cooler or warmer:

Factor 1:
Which side of the color wheel it is on

In general, the red-orange-yellow side of the color wheel is warmer, and the green-blue-purple side is cooler. Add in warmer or cooler colors as needed to pull your mixture out of the mud.

Factor 2:
How close it is to the very
warmest or coolest colors

The very warmest hue on the color wheel is a bright, orangey yellow. The very coldest hue is a bright blue. Imagine you're traveling around this color wheel like the hand of a clock. The closer you get to the warmest yellow, the warmer the color will become. The closer you move toward the blue, the cooler the color will become. For example, red-violet is cooler than red-orange. yellow-green is warmer than greenish-blue.

Factor 3:
How much white paint
the color contains

Blue is the coolest hue on the color wheel, but there is a paint color so cold, it gives blue frostbite—pure white!

In the color wheel above, there is a narrow ring with the most saturated form of each color (1). The farther you travel away from this ring and toward the center of the circle, the more white is added (2). Adding white will cool any other color—even blue!

If your shadows look chalky, you likely have too much white in your mixture.

Quick Tips

Sometimes you need to move around the color wheel like a clock. Sometimes you need to move across it like a spoke. Often, you need to do both—move diagonally to change both color and intensity.
Usually, only a subtle shift is required to fix a bad temperature relationship.
If you're illustrating a child playing in a mud puddle… by all means, use muddy color!

Let me show you how to put
these principles into practice

In the video below, I paint 2 portraits with different skin coloration--one deep, the other fair. Watch me mix every color as I explain each step! Starter Pack: Mixing Lifelike Skin Colors
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