Colour mixing basics - Acrylic painting technique to match a colour

So here I'm going to try and match this colour here, this yellowy-orange. So when you look at the colour wheel you've got to try and see which colour on the colour wheel is closest to that colour. So for this one, well there's a yellowy-orange, so I'm going to start with the yellow. So I'll just grab a bit of the yellow and then I start to analyse to see okay which way is it now going to go. Well it's obviously going to go towards orange here. When I hold that next to it it's way, way too bright. So in terms of getting its hue, initially that's the first thing we're looking to. I'm going to add a little bit more red to it. So when you're mixing colours you only need to do, you know, a little bit. Yellow isn't very strong in terms of its tinting strength, whereas reds and, you know, the blues are a lot stronger. So I'll just start to mix that in together. Okay and then I can hold it up and then you look at the value of it as in how light or how dark. Well that's still, this is still a lot lighter than this colour here we're after. So I can still add a little bit more of the red to it because red is darker in value than the yellow. If you took a black and white picture of these three you'd see that that would be, this one red would be a lot darker. A bit more. Okay and when I'm looking at that I'm squinting my eyes, I'm trying to get it so that there isn't like a jump, you know, when you hold it over it you squint your eyes at it. You're trying to get so that this and this, you know, merging together so they're just one. Now I know that it's not the ideal value yet, it's not the ideal tone, it's still a bit too light but it's a lot closer than where we were to start with just with this yellow. So now I look at the intensity, the saturation of it and I can see okay this is still way too bright. So what I'm going to do is add a bit of its complement, the blue, to it. So again I'm just going to add a tiny, a tiny amount. See how it starts to go and it's green, you've got to be brave and kind of keep on mixing. Okay and now I'm looking at that I'm thinking it's still a bit too, it's a bit too greeny than this so I'm going to need to add a bit more of the red. Okay and that's looking pretty close. Now when you are checking colours it's always worth, you know, putting a little kind of swatch next to it. I'd usually do this on a piece of scrap paper and then what happens with acrylics is it dries off, it dries darker. So actually when I look at these next to each other I can see that that's going to dry a little bit too dark and I need a little bit more of the yellow. So you can just grab a bit more yellow and you notice how I grabbed a lot more of the yellow than I did of the blue to lighten it because yellow isn't as isn't as strong. Okay that's looking pretty good. This is Wilkem from Wilkem Art School.