We are now going to match three colors. Not all together, but separately, we're going to start with a secondary color, then a primary color, and then a tertiary color. If you don't know what those terms are, don't worry, I will define them all as we go. So let's start with a purple color. And by the way, this is the best way to practice matching color is to go to your paint store and get these free paint chips. Hopefully, they won't get angry at me for saying this.

But these paint chips are great, there's nice big area of color that you can, you can match. So that's what these are from. Here's the purple from the paint store and a purple is a secondary color. What is the secondary color? It's basically a color that made from two other colors. So remember, I talked about that primary colors red, yellow, and blue.

Primary Colors are colors that cannot be obtained through mixtures from other colors. They are your basic baseline colors red, yellow, and blue. When you combine any of those two red with yellow, yellow with blue, red with blue, you come up with a secondary color. Let's look and one of those is going to be purple. Let's go back to this chart that I had of primary colors. We move this over so you can see it.

Remember I said there are three primary colors red, yellow, and blue. Even though we're using two of each. The category is called Red category blue category yellow. So three categories of primary colors. Now there's three categories of secondary colors, orange, green, and purple. Here they are.

So each one of these colors is made from two of these categories. So if we look at purple, that'll be the first color we're going to match its name have red and blue. So I kind of put it like this. In fact, I'll just make life really easy. Here we go. Red and Blue makes purple and yellow and red.

Makes orange. I'm gonna have trouble with the line here. yellow, and blue makes green. So we've got our three secondary colors and three primary. Now we are going to mix this particular purple. And remember I said that I wanted to give you the skills, the tools to be able to match perfectly so we're not just going to match any purple, we're going to match this purple.

Exactly. And that will strengthen our eyes, I think at our eyes as muscles. And this exercise that we're going to go through we're going to match this purple Exactly. It's really a lovely exercise to clarify and strengthen Your eye muscles, which I have to say is more than just color matching, I use eye strengthening muscles in the way that I look at my work and figure out how to make it better how to improve it, and to analyze it. So, back to what we're working on, which is matching purple. We know it's made of red and blue.

Okay, so I'm going to move this chart out of the way. So it's made of red and blue. But here's our first dilemma. I've got two reds and two blues, which red and which blue are going to make me the best start for this purple. Now, the way to start matching a color in general, is to start with the brightest version of that color. If this is a purple, we want to make the brightest purple first and keep changing it until it becomes this particular purple.

So it's a lot easier to start bright and get dollar darker, more muted and move into this purple than it is to start with something that It's dark and dull, and try to get brighter. So by the way, this system that we're doing with this purple can be used for any secondary color green, orange, purple. So let's start with the brightest version of this purple. And we've got how many choices do we have, we have two reds and two blues. So the way that I start the first purple that I start to mix, I have four choices, this red and this blue, this red and this blue. This blue with this red, this blue with that red.

So I have four choices and how to start and it makes a big difference in how I start. Let's go back to the tubes. This is the yellow blue. This is the ultramarine blue. This is the quinacridone magenta and this is the Pyro red. Okay, which one's gonna make us the brightest purple?

Here's how we think about it. This purple is made of red and blue. And there's one primary color that's missing from that. That would be Yellow. So we have red and blue in here and we want to avoid yellow. Well you could say hey Nancy, that's easy.

I just won't put yellow into my mixture. Ah, but here's the trick is that one of these reds and one of these blues has a small amount of yellow, not not, it has a small amount of a yellow mean towards it, it doesn't actually have yellow pigment in it. One of these reds is a little warmer or leans to the yellow and one of the blues is a little warmer or leans to the yellow and you might not be able to see it in the color but it's in there. And to prove it to you, I'm going to Nick the brightest purple and the Dallas purple from different combinations just to show you. So if I take this red, which I don't know if you can see but it has a little bit of yellow in it. I don't want to mislead you.

It doesn't have yellow paint. It just leans towards the yellow So if I use this red with the blue that leans towards a little yellow, that would be this glue. And I mixed it together, put a little more in there. Now you notice it's very, very dark. One of the colors, the fail Oh blue is a modern color. And to really see what the color is, I'm going to have to pop it or give it a little tail of white just to see what that color is.

And you could call that a purple but it looks pretty dull, especially compared to when I use the correct pair. This is the red that has no leaning towards yellow. And this is the blue that has no leaning towards yellow going to mix it together. This has a modern color in it too. Therefore I will have to add a little bit of white not to the whole pile, but just a little tail so I can visually See what I've got. Here's a little bit of white.

Alright, these are both made from blue and red but look at the difference between the two. One looks like a very pure purple and the other looks like a very muted gray ish neutrally purple. And I need this chart here. To show you what I just did. Here it is the fellow blue with the Pyro red. The original two mixed together.

Here's their mass tone and their undertone or a thick version and a thin version of the color. And here it's popped or tinted a little bit of white to show you that this blue and red has just made a lovely grey whereas the ultramarine blue here and the quinacridone magenta mixed together thickly. Here's its mass tones gray, dark Did a thin version, here's the undertone, or the thin version is very bright, and a pop version looks like purple. So you can see that how you start is very important. So now we know we want to start with the brightest purple, we're going to start with the ultramarine blue. I just realized I could use this pile but I'll start again here.

Okay, so here is how I'm going to start matching this color. The first thing we did was pick the correct pair to make the brightest that we can. And the next thing we're going to do is not look at this wet color here and compare it far away from the card, but I'm actually going to take a piece of it on my palette knife. This is very key to the whole matching system is don't match four feet apart. You want to play it directly on your swatch like that. I'm sorry, I'll call this the swatch so we don't get confused.

And I'll call this the paint chip that I got from the paint store. And immediately when you put it on, you can see that it's too dark. So the first thing we do is say it's too dark. The opposite of dark is light, we want to make it lighter, we're going to add some white and take some white, mixed it in. And every time I do something, I'm going to put a swatch on this paint chip until it matches perfectly. And it's easy to say, Oh, I can tell from this glob of paint.

I just need to add this, this and this but it's better to do it one at a time. There's no awards for fast mixing. What we're trying to do is exercise our eye every time we put a swatch on this paint chip card are I records that amount of paint in this mixture on this then pretty soon after practicing, you can while you're painting you can mix and match without doing the swatch. But for now, so that made a big difference, it's getting closer. Now, again, the trick is to stare at it and stare at your swatch on the paint chip until you can see a difference between the two. Now there's six ways that this swatch can differ from the paint chip, there's only six, it can be lighter or darker.

It can be warmer or cooler, in this case, red or bluer, or brighter or dollar, only six. So if you get confused and say, huh, they look close, I can't see a difference. keep staring, the more you stare, your eyes will actually shift them to more contrast so you can see the difference more clearly. Your eyes are really wonderful muscles. So the more I stare at this, it still looks darker. So I'm going to add more white.

Now you can mix with a brush if you don't remember before when I did that first example, in the introduction, I used a brush to mixed color. Now I'm using a palette knife, and it's very important to know the difference. A brush is meant to hold paint, and a palette knife is meant to release paint. So if I want to match a color and have enough of it to paint with, I'm going to want to use the knife. If I mixed this with a brush would all end up on the brush and I wouldn't have a pile of paint here to match. Notice that each time that I make a difference in this batch of paint, I wipe off my knife so it's clean and I get a clean glob of paint swatch and swatch it huh, looks like I went a little too far lighter.

That's okay. It's all Fun exercises for your eye. So now I'm a little bit lighter, I can go and add more of that same purple, and I have some up here. This was same purple, but I can also see that it's a little bit brighter, and the swatch is dollar. So if I want to make $1, I could do two things, I can add what's called its complement, and that is the opposite of what's blue and red. We talked about that in the beginning.

If the purple is made of blue and red, what's the one primary that's missing is yellow, that's also called its complement. And that's what we want to avoid if we want to make the brightest purple, but we want to add it in if we want it to get dollar. So if I added a little bit of yellow, and doesn't matter which yellow, yellow, and let's put it in so I added a little more purple and a little yellow this time to make it a little darker and a little duller. And it's really important to mix it very homogenous Li instead of leaving it all marbleized so you can see what your color is doing. So I'm going to dip it into my new batch. And notice I'm putting them lining them up not just putting them everywhere so I can really see the succession of what I'm doing.

It's getting better but it still needs a little bit more of both. So I'm going to go ahead add more purple. Now another way to get something dollars to add some black that's why I like to add to have black right from the tube on my palette. So I'm going to add a little black instead of the yellow just to see if that makes it move a little quicker to that color. And I'm I'm moving my palette knife like this in a spiral and then I'm smashing it one student once told me she said you should call it the the push and smash method of mixing color. But anyway, I'm trying to instead of spreading it out all over I'm trying to push it into a little pile.

I'm wiping my knife off again. And it's getting there. Some people would call that close enough but I, if I don't know if you noticed, but the color starts real contrast II and now it's starting to get closer and closer it's almost looks like it's fading out and disappearing I want my color to almost disappear into the swatch. I want to say one thing, which is that I picked a matte swatch, I'm sorry matte paint chip instead of a gloss paint chip so that you wouldn't have reflection on the video. But gloss paint chips would be easier to match when you're working with gloss paint. So it's up to you.

The other thing I want to mention is that you could be blow drying your paint each time to see what the color actually is going to look like when it's dry. And I'm not using the blow dryer. I'm just going to match it wet to save us time so you don't have to watch me blow dry each time we do a swatch, but if I want a super perfect match, when it's dry, I would have to blow dry and I have one here would have to blow dry until it's dry and then look at it to decide what I need. So I would say when you're home doing this, do it with a blow dryer so that you can really get it back exactly. But what we're gonna do is just match it wet. It's the same process.

So I'm going to keep adding, it still looks bright, and a little bit lighter. So I'm going to add more of the yellow and not more of the purple. And I'm going very, very slow. It's better to go slow and it's also good to get multiple paychecks Except the same color, because you could actually fill up a whole card and then go to another card. It's good to have more than one. It's slowly getting.

Let's see now it looks a little more. Still looks brighter. I'm going to try just in black. The good thing to know is that everything I have on this palette is all I need to make this. Absolutely perfect. It's getting better.

Huh? I'm gonna stare at it for a little while and I think it's going in the right direction. So I'm going to keep adding more and more black. Oh, I might have added too much I think I did which is good because then I can show you what will happen if you overkill the color. Let's see. Oh, that's pretty good.

I don't know in this light if you can see it but it's almost disappearing and that's what you want. You want to be able to look at the card and not even see what your last swatches and I'm going to be real picky and I'm just going to add a little more white and a little more purple. Just to brighten it up again because I went a little too far with the black. See if that helps. And it really is, it's so easy to say I don't want to bother wiping off my knife, but it really is important to get a clean swatch on your paint chip. Also, I want to mention, it's good to start with more paint than you think you need, because you end up using a bunch of paint.

Doing this, this matching process. I'll cover the logo there. That's pretty good. I don't know if the lighting is working here. But from my point of view, I can barely see the difference between the paint and the paint chip, the wet paint and paint chip. So we've just finished matching the purple.

And let's summarize. This system works for any secondary color. Remember, we're going to mix a secondary than a primary than a tertiary. So for the category of secondary, which are anything that looks orange, green or purple, you want to start with the brightest pair, the brightest pair of the initial components. So with the purple, it was a blue and a red with green, it's going to be blue and yellow. And with orange, it's going to be a red and a yellow and you Want to look at your palette and decide which are the two that you're going to use.

That'll give you the brightest version of that. Mix that up. If it's got a modern color in its component, it might need a little bit of white right away to kind of pop it and see what the color is really looking like. And from there, you just watch your pink chip and you keep changing it until you're finished until it's absolutely perfect.