Understanding Polymer Clay Color, by Making Mud

Video #674: Do you know what color you get, when you mix the 3 primary colors together? Yellow + Blue + Red = Muddy Brown!

Topics Covered In This Video:

• I am going to teach you a little bit more about understanding polymerclay color mixing… by making mud.
• Do you remember back in Elementary School, when you got your box of paints out, and you had all the pretty colors of the rainbow to put onto your painting?
• Well, if you mixed all those colors together, you ended up with basically a really muddy brown color.
• That is because you were mixing all three primary colors together which ends up making mud.
• The same thing happens with polymer clay.
• To show you what I mean, I took a ball of scrap polymer clay (which basically has all the different colors in it) and I cut the ball in half. I mixed the one half together until it was blended and ended up with this brown mud color.
• Back when we were learning about the primary colors, if you mixed all three of the primary colors together, you would get brown. And that is exactly what I did get.
• I mixed Cadmium Red with Zinc Yellow and Cobalt Blue… and got dark brown.
• Well, we also learned that if you mix only two of the primary colors together, you would get the other secondary colors, which are red+yellow=orange, yellow+blue=green, and red+blue=purple.
• Now take a look at this particular purple… it’s a purple alright, but it is kind of muddy, if you compare it to Premo Purple.
• The reason for that is that when you are mixing Cadmium Red and Cobalt Blue, you are not actually mixing only two primary colors together… you are actually mixing three. Because if you take a look carefully at this red (Cadmium Red), it has a touch of yellow in it. It is kind of on the orangey side. Which means you’ve actually got the red, the blue and a touch of yellow in the mix… all three primary colors.
• Now because the red and the blue are the most dominate, you’re basically getting a purple. But, because of that touch of yellow, it is a little on the muddy side.
• This issue happens with all the colors of clay in the Premo line (and most other brands too).
• If we take the colors from the red line, Cadmium Red, Pomegranate, and Fuchsia you can see that they are quite different looking.
• Cadmium Red has quite a bit of yellow in it… it has more of an orangey look. It is what we call a warm color. Think yellow like the sun, and the sun is warm. so yellow in a color makes it warm.
• Pomegranate is more of a neutral color… it has both warm and cool reds in it.
• The Fuchsia has a lot of blue in it. When you look at it, it looks more purpley. So that would be what we consider a cool red. Think blue like ice and ice is cool, so blue is a cool color.
• So, when you’re mixing any one of these three reds, you are going to end up with different results, depending on what you’re mixing it with.
• When we saw the mix with the Cadmim Red and the Cobalt Blue, we got kind of a muddy purple because of the touch of yellow in the red.
• If you mix the same Cobalt Blue with Pomegranate instead, you get a little less muddy purple because that red is more neutral but still has all three primaries.
• When we mix Cobalt Blue with Fuchsia instead, we are back to using only two primaries again… with the Fuchsia being a cool red with a touch of blue mixing with the Cobalt (no yellow) we end up with a more pure or cleaner purple color.
• The same thing holds true when we mix the different reds with Zinc Yellow.
• Cadmium Red with Zinc Yellow has only two primaries and therefore, ends up as a clean orange. Pomegranate and Zinc Yellow mixed together, give a slightly muddy orange. And Fuchsia mixed with Zinc Yellow givs a very muddy orange.
• So the trick here is… if you want your colors more pure, really look at your base colors that you’re mixing. How many primaries are you mixing together? Does that color look a little bit warm like it maybe has a touch of yellow in it? Or does it maybe have a touch of blue in it?
• If you have three primaries you are going to have a muddy color and if you only have two, you’ll have a cleaner color.
• Hopefully that was clear as mud for everyone… I mean that in a good way. Understanding muddy colors will definitely help you when you are trying to mix up a particular shade of something.

• Related Video: Color Plus 1 Mixing Trick
• Related Video: Polymer Clay Color Saturation
• Related Video: Mixing Custom Color Recipes
• Related Article: Learning About Polymer Clay Color Mixing

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