I am trying to figure out how to make the colors in my paintings closer to the colors in real nature.

Of all the color mixing instruction I have seen on the internet, Mark Carder’s offerings are the easiest for me to understand. At first it takes a lot of time and effort but the more you do it the easier it gets. Until you realize you no longer need it, using a color checker as shown on drawmixpaint.com, or something less fancy like a strip of wood, will help you immensely as you learn to mix colors, whether working from life or a photo. I find that a fairly large, at least 8×10, photo helps me match colors more easily than trying to match them on a computer monitor.

http://www.drawmixpaint.com/

http://www.drawmixpaint.com/classes/online/step-6-beginning-to-mix-colors.html

He has 144 free videos on YouTube. His painting methods are also quite good, but might not fit your style. If they are different from your style, I feel it would be worth going through his free course regardless if you want to learn more than color mixing. The most instructive painting technique I got out of his videos was to NOT mix your brush strokes. Lay them down and leave them as is. The results might not be something you like, but you will learn a lot by sticking to it.

https://www.youtube.com/user/DrawMixPaint

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuZ0t5FR9f0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeyYXMl934g

The result of mixing two colors depends on the specific pigments. It also depends on how transparent the colors are (some pigments can be prepared to be more or less transparent, by different manufacturers).

Generally speaking “mixing complements” will produce a darker result, if the colors are transparent. Think of light partially penetrating the mixture, and thus encountering many particles of each pigment. The result is as close to being “subtractive” as you can get. But if the colors are opaque, then some light will interact with only one or a few particles, before being bounced back out. In this case, the mixture has both a “subtractive” component and an “additive” component. It is why mixtures of opaque colors are more likely to become muddy.

The purpose of a mixing complement is to reduce chroma. This applies whether the colors are transparent or opaque. As an exercise, start with the Vermilion (hue, I presume). I use PR255 (Scarlet Lake) which is similar. This is a very chromatic orange-red. Add just a tiny touch of a blue or green color; the optimal color depends on exactly what you have. Mix well. Notice that the Vermilion color is still orange-red, but is duller than before. If your green-blue is well-chosen, the mixture will dull down to a color like Venetian Red, which is still at approximately the same hue angle. Then it will dull down even more, to a chocolate brown color. If your colors are close to transparent, and if the colors are true mixing complements, it can become close to black.

But to see the above effect to best advantage, you might have to add just a tiny touch of white as you go along. This is because, if the two colors are true complements and transparent, the mixture gets darker, which obscures the fact that (even at constant lightness value) it is losing chroma and becoming grayer.

In the opposite case, a color such as Phthalo Blue is a bit too chromatically shocking for sky blue, regardless of the amount of white added. The excessive chroma can be knocked down, using a mixing complement. For example, I have used Phthalo Blue (Green Shade) dulled with Venetian Red, and Indanthrone Blue dulled with Raw Umber, to provide a varied range of sky blues (also with white, of course). The chromatic brilliance and hue angle are easily controlled this way.

Of all the color mixing instruction I have seen on the internet, Mark Carder’s offerings are the easiest for me to understand. At first it takes a lot of time and effort but the more you do it the easier it gets. Until you realize you no longer need it, using a color checker as shown on drawmixpaint.com, or something less fancy like a strip of wood, will help you immensely as you learn to mix colors, whether working from life or a photo. I find that a fairly large, at least 8×10, photo helps me match colors more easily than trying to match them on a computer monitor.

[URL]http://www.drawmixpaint.com/[/URL]

[URL]http://www.drawmixpaint.com/classes/online/step-6-beginning-to-mix-colors.html[/URL]

He has 144 free videos on YouTube. His painting methods are also quite good, but might not fit your style. If they are different from your style, I feel it would be worth going through his free course regardless if you want to learn more than color mixing. The most instructive painting technique I got out of his videos was to NOT mix your brush strokes. Lay them down and leave them as is. The results might not be something you like, but you will learn a lot by sticking to it.

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/user/DrawMixPaint[/URL]

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuZ0t5FR9f0[/URL]

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeyYXMl934g[/URL]

that dude is indeed a really good source, I had watched a few of his videos and learned quite a bit.

Blacks are Black!

Only the New Zealand rugby team are All Blacks

It’s important to understand the difference between a visual complement and a mixing complement, as pigments can behave in surprising and unanticipated ways. Although it’s about watercolor, I’ve found the Handprint site’s tables and color wheel to be especially useful, as it’s based on pigment, not visual hues. Here’s the link: https://handprint.com/HP/WCL/color16.html
You have to scroll down a bit for the table and further still for the color wheel, which you can click to enlarge. Although the creator of the site, Bruce McEvoy, says that pigments in water color aren’t equivalent to the same pigment in oil paints or acrylics, I’ve found his tables and the color wheel to be very useful. Note that a lot of his information is very technical, but the chart and color wheel are pretty much self-explanatory.

The various links already posted are really informative and I would like to add one more by Dan Scott. Grayed, Muted, Desaturated color is what I think you are looking for help in. But, it also helps if you are familiar with the color wheel and Bruce MacAvoy’s link above at his Handprint site is extremely helpful in more than just watercolor (as has been mentioned already).

Dan’s explanation of the ‘why’ to use grayed colors is easy to understand and there’s some photo’s to show colors on his palette, including the infamous red square in a green square box – but shown at full chroma and half chroma for the green to emphasize the use of desaturated colors. It is a quick read.
His article link is:

https://drawpaintacademy.com/the-beauty-of-muted-colors/

(Dan’s blog of free articles may be helpful too:

https://drawpaintacademy.com/blog/ )

Also, one of our members of Wet Canvas, Dianne Mize, also has a very good 10 minute video on You Tube about how to neutralize colors that might be helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8ZDL7X24Cc&t=34s

Amaldus Nielsen’s paintings are very beautiful, and they seem to be filled with muted colors – but his limited use of brighter colors exemplifies (imho) what Dan Scott’s article also says:

“When you use a base of muted colors, you have much more control over where you direct people to look in your painting, as you can use relatively more color and detail around your focal point.”

Happy Color Explorations!

To blue I may add vermillion, or vermillion and cad yellow if I want a warm neutral. Or I add a krapplak (same as madder or rose), or a raw umber if I want a cool neutral. There are a thousand options.

My 2 cents –
you don’t need 3 blues, and 3 reds and 3 greens and a ton of colors on your palette. It just makes your thousand options turn into millions and so overwhelming you won’t learn anything. Pick a simple palette with 4-8 colors – the Zorn palette, or the FAA atelier palette, or the saturated primary palette… Stick with that palette for a few years. Learn how to mix all the colors you need with those colors. Because it isn’t overwhelming, you will learn this palette intimately and you will know how to mix 98% of the colors you want. And after 20 or however many paintings, then you will figure out if certain colors are truly impossible with your palette, and then you can add a special color for those paintings that need something extra.

For example my palette is black, burnt umber, ultramarine, madder, vermillion, yellow ochre, cad yellow, and white. Sometimes less colors. Notice for example no green. I can mix any green with this palette – pure neon green with cad yellow and ultramarine, natural greens with black and cad yellow, or blue and yellow ochre…. 98% of the time I can mix every color I need for a painting. If I have something really unusual, like an icy mint blue shirt, I can swap out the ultramarine with a cobalt or schevningsblue for that painting.