Art Video of the Week - Avoiding Muddy Colours

You'll often hear artists talk about working with a limited palette, restricting to primary colours, with the argument that with the primaries you can mix all other colours. Is this true? Well, to a point.

This week makoccino takes us through why some primary mixes make muddy colours and, more importantly, what you can do to avoid them.


At the heart of it all the issue is really simple: when it comes to pigments, there is no perfect primary. Once you know this, you can look for warm or cool bias and build your palette accordingly. For that, I recommend a split primary palette and, if you're not sure where to start, Daniel Smith makes a great one for watercolour.