Color Recipes for Watercolors Helping you finalize color schemes, hold on to favorite mixes, and create consistent iterations
When painting with watercolors, you’re mixing one or more colors with water. That can happen spontaneously or in a very calculated way depending on your goals.
Color recipes can help with both methods.
What is a color recipe?
A color recipe for watercolor paints will include one or more paint colors and a water level. In the book I am featuring on this page, there are 5 water levels from pale to strong. That’s a good place to start. A recipe will look something like this:
50% Azo yellow + 50% Prussian blue in a water level 2
- Your color recipes help you to recreate the colors you used in a painting.
- Referring to color recipes helps you to match a color in a reference photo or help you to find the right color.
Creating your color recipe
I typically create a recipe for each of my paint mixes and then a grouping of those recipes for the painting’s recipe.
I also keep track of the brand of paint as colors are going to vary between paint brands especially those with different biding agents. For example, for a binding agent, Sennelier uses honey as opposed to the gum arabic used by many other brands like Daniel Smith, one of my favorites. Studying your paint colors and how they interact with each other is an important step in your watercolor journey.
Much like cooking recipes, you can create your own or refer to a book for ready-made recipes.
Here is what some of the recipes look like in the book:
Referring to recipes
Trial and error can be costly and also time consuming. I always encourage you to play with your colors and learn how they work together and thats great when you’re coming up with your own recipes.
When painting from a reference photo you can use recipes to color match. If you’re new to painting skin tones, refer to a recipe such as the ones shown in this image form the book. This will save you time and help you learn more about how your paints work.
How do I create a color recipe?
In my blog about primary colors, you’ll see the varied hues you can create just with the 3 primary colors. Remembering the amount of color and water you used to create that perfect color may not be ideal. So you want to write it down.
Using percentages is a good way of writing down a recipe. Similar to the pages of the book 1500 Color Mixing Recipes you make a note of the amount of colors and water you’ve used; 40% yellow + 60% red + water level 2. Water level in the book varies from 1-5, with 5 being the least wet.
Create your own recipe book
Starting your own recipe book can help you so much as you paint your beautiful scenes. Use a large enough book for your needs and create an index where you can refer to recipes in your book. Think about how you’d like to organize the pages and begin to add your color recipes.
Once you’ve started to fill it up it can also be a great source of inspiration. Make the book your own and include as much as you need to help you recreate colors.
