Color Mixing Recipes for Oil & Acrylic: Mixing Recipes for More Than 450 Color Combinations - Includes One Color Mixing Grid (Volume 2) (Color Mixing Recipes, 2)

As someone that never took an art class and at the age of 65, I want to make art. I look for any sources of help I can find. When I watch art tutorial videos, and the artist says that a mixed color is on the warm side or the cool side or it has some red or blue in it, I want to scream (so they can hear me through my computer monitor) how do you know this? Well, they know their colors and paint mixtures a whole lot better than I do, obviously. I see the color wheel in any book on color for quilts and it has turned me off since unless you are sewing with solids, it is hard to really know what color it will read in a quilt. The book shows the color wheel and shows how it mixes with the different other colors and what happens if you add white or black, the author calls them 'recipes'.I started learning how to read a recipe nearly 60 years ago. I understand recipes and what they are trying to do. This book has pages and pages of the different results of mixing say 3 parts red, with 2 parts blue, and a peck of white. The index at the back of the book is more than a regular index. If you want to have a color that looks like broccoli, find it in the index and it will tell you what page to go to and which recipe to use. When you get to that recipe for broccoli, the color does look to be the color of broccoli. You can do the same with peaches, skin tones, all sorts of things. You do not have to go through the book looking at the swatches for the recipe colors, as the index is a great help. The book also includes a plastic insert to use for mixing the correct amount of colors which is like missing the correct amount of food in a recipe. Once you measure out the different colors and specks, you can transfer the paint with your paint spatula onto your palette and mix them up there. Depending on how you work, make a note as to which recipe you used in case you feel the need to mix up more of that color.The only thing that I had a problem with this book is the paint colors that they listed that you needed to make all the recipes. I have several sets of acrylic paint and none of them have all the colors called for. I had about half of them between several sets of acrylic paint. Some of the colors I had never heard of such as Ivory Black. I did have about half of the colors that were called for. I also found a website that clarifies the names of paints and what color they are which I think will be useful for the paint colors that I am missing. I have had some troubles prior to getting this book as I made mud, so I look forward to doing things properly.I think for those of us just starting out in art with no guide along the way, it will be a worthwhile addition to your reference library. I appreciate getting this book to review. Thank you. I am learning a lot.

I’m really enjoying this book. I was a professional artist for years but my medium was graphite which I taught myself. Unfortunately, I was unable to afford art school, so I have no idea how to begin working with color, it’s a whole new confusing world to me and I’m incredibly intimidated by it. This book is very well done and really helped me understand the basic principles I was never taught. Im still trying to get use to all the paint names but this book tells you how much of each color by name that you need to get any pictured color on the charts shown and it’s measured in parts, like one part this and two parts that. A whole page will be what you can get with say cadmium yellow plus two other colors, the recipes are very simple. In the back there is an envelope with a layout card, so you can see how much to squeeze out in a line of each tube to clearly show one part, two parts etc..I recommend really reading this book and not just looking at the swatches and try to mix colors right off. In the front of this book the information on color theory is invaluable and will shed a lot of light on how to use color correctly, it covers clear explanation of hue, tone and shade which was enlightening. The more I read this the more I realized how much I needed this book. If you are new to painting this is a really great book, if you are a seasoned painter, the color reference and mixing charts will be very useful. Even covers flesh colors and how to use them. Really like this book, it’s not big and daunting, it’s simple and to the point, I learned a lot just in the first few pages and more and more as I read this book. I will be reading this front to back more then once till I fully get it. I’m feeling braver page by page. I definitely recommend this book.

Helps to take the guess work out of blending various colors.

This is an excellent book on mixing color. It's not very technical, written so anyone can understand it, with color recipes that are broken down into clear formulas.There's also a plastic grid in an envelope in the back of the book you can use to squeeze out of the tube on to measure each color paint. I would think it would be easier to use this grid with acrylic paint since it would be easier to clean off when finished, wash the grid before the paint dries since acrylic is just about impossible to remove when dry. Acrylic is a plastic so plastic paint on plastic can be a real bear to deal with. Or better yet, make a few copies of the grid on printer paper and use a transparent or glass palette laid top of of the grid copy.I took a color theory class in college and it was the most difficult art class I had. I went away knowing how to mix any color I needed just by eyeballing whatever I was painting and know which colors to mix to get it. I'm getting old now and am too tired to always eyeball and analyze colors to figure out what to mix with what to get that exact color.Of course I have colors I have used over and over and it's a no brainer to mix them up during a painting session. Still, it is so nice having a "cheat sheet" of sorts to just look up the recipe for getting a color I want to use if I can't simply look at the subject and have those color recipes pop out at me.I like this book a lot. When I got this book, it was just out of curiosity to see if it was any good. It is very good.