What colours do you need to start painting

With so many colours available, which ones should you buy when you first start painting with acrylics? While we all know it’s possible to mix a rainbow of colours from just three primary colours (blue, red, and yellow), most of us don’t, preferring the ease of being able to squeeze a particular colour out of a tube. And some colours are simply brighter or darker than anything you can mix. The colours listed here make up a good basic palette of acrylic colours and from it you should be able to mix all the colours you’ll want.

Red
Get both Alizarin crimson and cadmium red medium (you also get a cadmium red light and dark). Alizarin crimson is a bluish, cool red which is relatively transparent which makes it ideal for glazing. Cadmium red medium is a yellowish, warm red and relatively opaque.

Blue
Phthalo blue is an intense, extremely versatile blue. It goes very dark when combined with burnt umber and, because of its high tinting strength, only a little need be mixed with white to create a lighter blues. (Also called phthalocyanine blue, monestial blue, and thalo blue.)

Yellow
Start with a tube of cadmium yellow medium. You can easily create a lighter yellow by adding white to this, though if you find you’re doing this regularly, consider buying a tube of cadmium yellow light too. Remember that if you want to darken yellow to try adding its complementary colour, purple, rather than black, which tends to produce an olive green rather than deeper yellow.

White
Titanium white is an opaque, bright white with a strong tinting power (meaning a little goes a long way). Some manufacturers also sell a “mixing white”, which is usually the cheapest and, as the name suggests, formulated to blend well with other colours.

Black
Mars black is a relatively opaque colour and should be added to other colours in small quantities until you’ve got used its strength. Another option is ivory black, but only if you’re not squeamish about it being made from charred bones (it was originally created from ivory).

Brown
Burnt umber is a warm chocolate brown that’s extremely versatile and likely to provide itself indispensable. It’s great for darkening the tone of other colours. Raw umber is very similar, but slightly lighter and cooler.

Green
Greens can be hard to mix consistently unless you’re meticulous to note the colours and proportions you used. Phthalo green is a bright bluish green. Mix it with cadmium yellow medium to get a variety of shades of greens.

Orange
Cadmium orange is just a mixture of cadmium yellow and red, but if you’re mixing an orange often, you’ll save yourself some time having it ready-made in a tube.

Purple
It’s worth buying a very dark purple as you can waste a lot of paint trying to mix one.

 Other Useful Colours

Payne's grey
a versatile, transparent dark blue-grey made from a mixture of blue and black, often with some red.

Yellow or golden ochre
a glorious, golden, yellowish brown.

Titanium buff or raw titanium
a deep cream useful for mixing with burnt umber to create skin tones.