How to Make the Color Orange - The Right Way

Once you start to learn how to make the color orange, tweak the shade, temperature, and more, there's no going back! Whether you're a beginning artist or have already explored your creative side for a year or two, this guide will help you become more creative in your craft. After all, mixing colors will help you find the right or unique orange for your art piece.

How to Make the Color Orange Tutorial

Orange is a color that will remind you of sunset, autumn, nature, and even Halloween because of pumpkins. It adds warmth, brightness, and energy to your artwork that will help them come alive in the eyes of anyone who looks at them.

While orange is part of almost all sets of paint products, you should make sure you have a backup plan when you run out of it in the middle of your painting session. Or perhaps you suddenly have the urge to play around with the color orange to give your artwork a different kind of vibe.

Supplies for Making the Color Orange

But before you can make orange paint, you must prepare all your materials; after all, in everything, preparation is crucial. While you won't need any special materials where you need to go to a specialty store, being able to finish the task at hand without needing to pause to look for a missing item is always more convenient and less stressful.

That said, the materials you need to prepare are those you also use when making brown, purple, and other colors. They're even already available in your arts and crafts arsenal.

These materials include your paintbrush, mixing palette, palette knife, and a white sheet of paper.

How to Make the Color Orange Using Two Primary Colors

Based on the color wheel, orange is one of the secondary colors, so you can make it using two analogous primaries, which are yellow and red. However, you also have to consider color bias or temperature, as it will have an effect on how the final color looks.

RED + YELLOW = ORANGE

Shades of Orange

You'll find that some cool red paint products have deeper, richer colors that lean more toward purple, so there is a high chance that you might end up with an orange color with brownish tints. That is especially true if you used too much of the red with a purplish tint. Still, some warm red paint products look almost orange or yellow, perfect for making orange.

When it comes to yellow, some warm yellows seem to look light orange, while others, like Naples yellow, can have red tints or pigmentation. On the other hand, some cool yellows lean more toward green colors, while others, like cadmium yellow, can have bluish tints or pigmentations.

The basic rule is: Using any of the primary colors with a "third" component (a color different from red or yellow) can make the final resulting color orange appear muddy.

With that in mind, depending on the specific orange color you want to produce, you can use the following color combinations to save you time from experimenting:

• Cadmium yellow and cadmium red: Warm, robust, bright orange
• Cadmium yellow and alizarin crimson: Cool, robust, dull orange
• Cadmium yellow and cadmium red: Bright orange
• Cadmium yellow and burnt sienna: Muted orange
• Yellow ochre and cadmium red: Muted orange
• Cadmium lemon yellow and vermillion red: Muddy orange

How to Make Orange with Red and Yellow

Now, using the color combination guide above, here are the steps you need to take to make orange paint.

Step 1: Place Equal Amounts of the Colors on Your Mixing Palette

Place a dollop or three to four drops of your yellow coloring agent on your mixing palette. If you have solid or paste-like paint, place a dollop of red color right next to the yellow paint. If you have liquid-based paint, drop the same amount of your red paint over the red paint.

Step 2: Combine the Colors

With your palette knife, bring the red color toward the yellow and slowly blend them to combine until you have one solid color. For liquid paint, simply mix the solution until it turns orange.

Step 3: Test the Resulting Color

Grab your paintbrush and dip it into your newly created orange paint. Then, brush it on your white paper to check if you have achieved the right shade of orange.

If yes, then go ahead and start painting! If not, proceed to the next steps.

Step 4: Adjust the Color Orange

If the orange you have looks more like red than orange, add more yellow to it. Meanwhile, add more red if it's leaning more toward the yellow hue.

Start with just a tiny drop or dollop, mix, and check. Then add more if needed. Just be careful since you might end up with yellow-orange or red-orange unless what you're trying to create is either of the two.

How to Make the Color Orange Using Three Primary Colors

While it's true that, in theory, only tertiary colors contain three different colors, there are days when you might not have one of the two colors required to make orange. Yes, it will involve more steps, but it's worth it.

How to Make Orange with Red, Green and Red

For this color combination, here are the steps that you need to take:

Step 1: Make the Yellow Color

Place a dollop or three to four drops of your red coloring agent on your mixing palette. If you have solid or paste-like paint, place a dollop of green color right next to the red paint. If you have liquid-based paint, drop the same amount of your green paint over the red paint.

Step 2: Combine the Colors

With your palette knife, bring the green color toward the red and slowly blend them to combine until you have one solid color. For liquid paint, simply mix the solution until it turns yellow.

Step 3: Test the Resulting Color

Grab your paintbrush and dip it into your newly created yellow paint. Then, brush it on your white paper to check if you have achieved the right shade of yellow.

If yes, jump to step 5. If not, proceed to the next steps.

Step 4: Adjust the Color

If the resulting paint looks more like red than yellow, add more green to it. Meanwhile, add more red if it's leaning toward the green hue.

Start with just a tiny drop or dollop, mix, and check. Then add more if needed.

Step 5: Make the Orange Color

Add a small dollop of red paint next to the yellow paint you created. Then, slowly bring a tiny amount of red paint to the yellow one with your palette knife. Blend the two colors and check if you already have a good shade of orange. If not, add more red by following the same steps until you achieve the right orange hue.

For liquid-based paint, add a tiny drop of red paint to the yellow paint. Mix to blend, and then check if you already have a good shade of orange. If not, add more red by adding another drop of red paint, mix, and check. Repeat until you achieve the right orange hue.

How to Make Orange with Yellow, Magenta, and Yellow

Choose this color combination if you don't have enough or completely run out of red paint. The steps are the same as above, except you'll use a different set of colors.

For step 1, you will need to create the red color by gradually adding magenta to yellow. Then, in step 5, you will need to add the resulting red paint gradually to your yellow paint.

How to Change the Color Orange's Value

At this point, you have an idea of what colors make orange and how to combine them to ensure you have the right shade of orange. But what if you have orange paint and you just want to make it lighter or darker? Here we will discuss how to make various shades of orange with your color palette.

1. How to Make the Color Orange Lighter

To make your orange paint lighter, you simply need to add the neutral color white. Whatever shades of orange, here's what you need to do to lighten it a bit:

1. Place a dollop or three to four drops of your orange paint on your mixing palette.
2. Place a smaller amount of white paint next to a dollop of orange paint. For liquid-based paint products, add one tiny drop of white paint.
3. With your palette knife, bring a small amount of the white paint toward the orange paint and mix until well blended. For liquid-based paint, simply mix the solution with your palette knife until well-blended.
4. Dip your paintbrush into your newly made light orange paint.
5. Paint it onto white paper to check if you have already achieved the shade of orange you're looking for.
6. If the paint isn't as light as you want it to be, repeat steps 2 to 5.

2. How to Make the Color Orange Darker

Making the orange color darker is a bit trickier than making the color orange lighter. Black can seem like a neutral color, but some black colors have a green base.

Without knowing how much green is used in the blend, you might end up with muddy brown paint instead of dark orange paint.

That's why it's also important to check your paint's label and only use a small amount of black. It means that you have to make sure you don't go overboard. Learn when to stop adjusting the orange's value.

With that out of the way, the steps you need to take are the same as the steps on how to make the color orange lighter. You just have to change the white paint to black paint.

3. How to Make the Color Orange Muted

Orange is a vivid or bright color. While you can make a muted shade of orange, you don't have to go through the process of how to make the color orange if you already have orange in your painting set.

Simply mute it by gradually adding any of its complementary colors, blue and green, to it.

Muting Orange by Adding Blue Color

When using blue to mute your orange paint, you have to be very careful with the amount added, as you might end up with brown paint. Also, using cool, dark blue can lead to a green color instead of orange.

With that said, here are color combinations that you can start with:

• Cadmium orange and cool blue (i.e., ultramarines): Cooler, muted shade of orange
• Cadmium orange and warm blue (i.e., cobalt blue): Warmer, muted shade of orange

Now, using any of the color combinations, here's how to make the color orange muted:

1. Place a dollop or three to four drops of your orange paint on your mixing palette.
2. Add one tiny dollop of blue over your orange paint or a tiny drop of blue paint to your liquid-based orange paint.
3. With your palette knife, mix the paint until well blended.

Muting Orange by Adding Green Color

The green color can add depth to your orange paint that will look more natural or earthy, so it's perfect for painting tombs, soil, vintage items from the Ancient Romans, or any orange-hued mineral.

Like with blue, you can create different muted shades of orange, depending on the shade of green you add to it. Here are some examples:

• Cadmium orange and phthalo green: Dark, cool muted orange
• Cadmium orange with Veronese green: Light, cool muted orange
• Cadmium orange with cadmium green: Warm muted orange

In terms of the steps on how to mute your orange paint with green, follow the same procedure as above, changing the blue paint to green.

How to Make the Color Orange - In Conclusion

The orange color is part red and part yellow, two colors found in all painting sets, making it easy to create orange from your painting set. The general steps that you need to take are to combine, blend, check, and adjust.

Since you can make different shades of orange, depending on what yellows and reds you use, painting any orange-colored articles is easier than ever. Go ahead and mix your paints and add apricots, carrots, frosting, and other important elements to your art piece.