How to Mix Brown from Primary Colors

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This article was co-written by Kelly Medford. Kelly Medford is an American painter living in Rome, Italy. She majored in classical painting, drawing and printmaking in the US and Italy. She mainly works on the streets in Rome and also travels for international collectors organizations. She founded Sketching Rome Tours in 2012, where she teaches sketching techniques to visitors to Rome. Kelly graduated from the Florence Academy of Art.

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Brown is a versatile color with many applications, but you can’t always find the brown you want in art color sets. Fortunately, you can blend many earth tones with just the base colors: red, blue, and yellow. Just mix these 3 colors and you have a basic brown color. Variations of brown tones by adding another base color, including a bit of black, or by combining two or more different shades.

Table of Contents

Blend primary colors in the same proportions

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Take a little bit of each color and place it on the mixing tray. Place red, blue and yellow colors close together on the mixing tray. The exact amount of color used will depend on how much brown you need. It is important that you start with equal proportions of each color. ^{[1] X Research Source}

Leave a small space between the colors. This will give you a large space in the middle to be able to pull the colors together.
Browning from primary colors is simply combining colors in equal amounts.

Tip: In theory, you can blend with materials like crayons, watercolors, and crayons. The end result may not be uniform, as these types are more difficult to blend.

Thoroughly mix the colors together. Using the tip of the color mixer, pull the inner edges of all 3 colors to the center, then use the flat bottom of the knife to blend the 3 colors in a circular motion, slowly blending outward to get more colors. The mixture will turn a smooth brown color. ^{[2] X Research Source}

If you’re using watercolors, crayons, or similar, you can layer the base colors on top of each other in thin layers until you get the shade you want.
Colors will be blended more evenly when you use a color mixer instead of a brush. ^{[3] X Research Sources}

Add a tint of white to give the brown more depth. Once the basic brown is mixed, you can add a drop of white and continue mixing until the white dissolves into the brown. Be careful not to use too much white – in most cases, you will only need a third of the total color or less. ^{[4] X Research Sources}

Add white color little by little. You can add white at any time, but if you overdo it, the brown will look dull and pale.
White when mixed into crayon, oil, and watercolor blends improves color consistency. ^{[5] X Research Sources}

Creating brown from secondary colors

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Mix red and yellow to orange. Start with an arbitrary amount of red, then add yellow little by little – aim for a 1:1 ratio. Mix the 2 colors together until the mixture turns a deep orange color. ^{[6] X Research Sources}

For a dark brown, you may need more red than yellow.

Kelly Medford

Painter

Kelly Medford is an American painter living in Rome, Italy. She majored in classical painting, drawing and printmaking in the US and Italy. She mainly works on the streets in Rome and also travels for international collectors organizations. She founded Sketching Rome Tours in 2012, where she teaches sketching techniques to visitors to Rome. Kelly graduated from the Florence Academy of Art.

Kelly Medford
Painter

The key here is the ratio. With brown, you have to decide on the shade of the color you want to blend – sepia, fawn, bluish brown, etc. Also, think about whether you need a very deep brown or a transparent brown. Mixing the right shades is just mixing the right proportions of the colors used.

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Mix blue with orange to get brown. Use less blue than orange – blue should make up less than 35-40% of the total color on the mixing tray. Mix thoroughly until you have a chocolate brown color. ^{[7] X Research Sources}

The more blue you mix, the more translucent your brown will be like chalk and almost plum.
Use sepia for a rustic and sunlit effect. ^{[8] X Research Sources}

Mix red and blue to make purple. Use an equal amount of each color. Purple is the perfect blend of red and blue, but you can go more red if you find it difficult to get the proportions right. ^{[9] X Research Source}

Purple can be difficult to blend properly. If the result is too red or blue, just add a little bit of the other color to balance it out.
If purple leans too much towards blue, it won’t come out the right color when you add an additional base color. Red is usually easier to deal with.

Slowly add yellow to purple until it turns brown. While mixing colors, you will see an ocher color starting to appear. Continue adding yellow until you get the shade you want. ^{[10] X Research Source}

Add more yellow to correct for browns that are too cold.
You can create a variety of brown tones from pinkish stony brown to desert sand brown, depending on the amount of yellow in it. ^{[11] X Research Source}

Mix blue and yellow to make green. Squeeze a decent amount of blue and add yellow in little by little. Like orange, you’ll start with a really deep green and work your way down to the middle of the color spectrum. ^{[12] X Research Source}

For best results, your green should lean more towards blue than pale turquoise.

Mix red with green to get brown. Add a little red to the green, mixing and adding little by little until the desired color is achieved. Green mixed with red often results in an earthy brown at one extreme, and a warm burnt orange at the other. ^{[13] X Research Source}

To get the most “pure” brown possible, your mix should have a red ratio of approximately 33-40%. Even with almost equal proportions, red still dominates.

Tip: Browns made up of red and green are especially suitable for painting landscapes and other natural scenes.

Brown variation with different shades

Add a bit of red or yellow for a warmer brown tone. If you want to brighten or highlight a basic brown, simply mix in a little warm base color. Pay attention to the proportions and blend the colors slowly until you get the shade you want. ^{[14] X Research Source}

If you accidentally mix too much red or yellow, just add a little blue to balance it out.
Warm browns are useful for showing details on wood, brick, earth and reflective natural light sources. ^{[15] X Research Source}

Increase the amount of blue to make a cooler brown. Similar to using red and yellow to darken brown to portray a bright and light-filled outdoor scene, you can add blue for a softer shade of brown. The bluish-brown color helps you show realistic shadows of the woods, buildings, hair, folds and creases in clothes. ^{[16] X Research Source}

Adjust an overly cold shade of brown with a hint of red or yellow, noting how each color interacts with blue to form a secondary shade.

Use black to darken the different browns you’ve just created. Technically, black is not considered a primary color. However, nearly every art color set is black, and it’s extremely useful if you want to darken a brown that’s too prominent.

A small amount of black will create a good effect. In most cases, you only need a little bit of black to significantly reduce the brightness of the brown. ^{[17] X Research Source}

Warning: Be careful not to overdo black when mixing with existing colors. Remember that black, once added, cannot be removed!

Blend many shades of brown together. Blending one shade with another is a simple and fun way to discover unexpected new shades. Try mixing a shade of brown using different primary color pairs (such as orange and blue or green and red). Then mix one or more colors together and see what happens! ^{[18] X Research Sources}

By combining multiple browns together, you can make subtle changes to a shade instead of completely transforming and adjusting the tinting tray.

Advice

If you come across a dramatic shade of brown, make a note of the colors you used so you can recreate that brown next time.
Experiment with different ratios of primary and secondary colors to see how many shades of brown you can create.

Things you need

Basic colors
Mixing tray, paint palette or cardboard
Color mixing knife
Oil wax, crayon or wax color (optional)

Steps

Blend primary colors in the same proportions

Creating brown from secondary colors

Brown variation with different shades

Advice

Things you need

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