Oil paint is a wonderful multitalented medium. But with all the varieties of colors, brushes, mediums and all other tools existing, it is actually enough to make one confuse. When you learn about the variety of brushes and mediums it could be bit confusing as well, and in fact it is a major challenges to exactly depict the nature and other real life objects on canvas using color.

Often one is puzzled on how to create color lighter or darker? Or how to make original shadows or highlights? Now with the article would be able to shed some colorful light on the condition, and with habitual practice, working with color in your oil paintings would become even easier and more enjoyable.

We could perhaps thank God for giving beautiful Sun, for without it, we might not have seen any color. Everything would just appear dark and colorless. The light from Sun travels in a straight line, so we take pleasure of the wonderful variety of light and shadow that makes everything so pleasant to paint.

For example, if you take an apple, and put it outside on the grass during sunlight, you would possibly notice various shades that the light creates when it shines on the apple. You have the main overall propensity of the apple, the shadow on the apple, the cast shadow, reflection from near by objects like the green grass and the sky. Painter job is to perfectly bring exactly these values on canvas by using color mixture. You could find many varieties of oil painting colors accessible in market today. All these special colors come from the six colors that make up the spectrum – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.

Colors carry four main properties: Value, Intensity, Hue and Temperature. The value of color determines the darkness and lightness of any particular color. The intensity of color determines how bright or dull the color actually is, also called as a saturation or purity. The temperature determines how warm or cool any color is. Finally, the hue is just another name for color. A red apple or a red cherry are both hues of red.

As we said color mixing is not a real science. If you survey 10 artists and ask different types of questions about color mixing, you would probably to get many different answers. We would just advise you to keep painting and practicing until you grow your own methods and formulas, which you are comfortable with. Happy Painting!