How do you make a color darker without using black?

Question

How do you make a color darker without using black?

Answer 1

Depending on what colors you use, any color darker than the original one will make it darker.

For example, you can get yellow darker by adding red or orange to it. Or brown. Depending on what hue you want.

You can add red to blue or brown to blue or dark green to blue.

You can add anything to white, but you must be very very careful with the amount otherwise it will lose its whiteness completely. A bit of baby blue mostly does the trick.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Can you be more specific with the colors you are using and what you want to go for? Warm or cool?



A good black mixture is Alizarine, ulrtamarine, and veridian. Those are all translucent pigments, however. Sometimes I replace the Alizarin with Burnt Umber to make it more opaque. Straight black is not really a great idea.

Answer 3

Kinda same as Michael B above, I use a mix of brown and blue.

Tends to be Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine I use mostly, but other blues and browns can be used to created subtle differences.



Adding black just dulls your painting

[of course this could be the effect you want to achieve, so don't dismiss it out of hand :)]

Answer 4

Use a larger amount of pigment in the paint concentration, or apply more layers of that color to enrich it. If you are looking for a very rich look, try using layers of different colors. This works very nicely for painting fabrics.

Answer 5

i use ultramarine blue and raw umber mixed together,i use that to darken all colors and keep the painting in key,thats a secret.

Answer 6

Try using Brown... or layer diffrent colors.

It all depends on what type of effect you're looking for.