Sunday 2 October 2011

Simple colour mixing


No matter what paint colours are laid out, Cakey turns them all brown. I keep saying 'don't mix all the paint colours together, you will get brown'. She always replies 'I like brown'. Well ok, but maybe we can mix some other colours...

I had some tubes of the primary colours – blue (specifically, cerulean blue), red (vermillion) and yellow (cadmium yellow). On three takeaway container lids I put splodges of:
  • blue/red (to make purple), 
  • red/yellow (to make orange),
  • yellow/blue (to make green). 
I added an extra takeaway lid and put a splodge of red and white so Cakey could mix pink.

we made a great green and orange...

Cakey got mixing and was very impressed at the wonderful orange, green and pink that she made. However, it bombed for purple. It seems that when you mix vermillion red and cerulean blue you get grey, much to Cakey's disappointment. (My artist mother has since told me that this happened because both cerulean blue and vermillion are on the 'yellow side'). Anyway, to the paint cupboard we went... we found a darker blue (more like ultramarine) and a brighter red (more like crimson) – these produced a beautiful purple and saved the day.

aha we finally mixed that purple

Cakey had a lovely time painting with her mixed colours. And in the end, they all got turned brown!

4 comments:

  1. Great post. I love how you laid it all out for her - and still got brown!

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  2. ...yeah I can't fight the brown!! thanks for the comment

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  3. ha ha my sister and I call it boy brown but i see that its also done by girls. I hope its just a phase as we have had the mix all the paint together thing goin on for 10months now, in desperation i gave red orange yellow and white only as our last painting colour choice which worked well :) love your blog its not the run of the mill activities for kids i like the creativity cheers for sharing x fiona (noni from http://sassyssanity.blogspot.com)

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  4. Thanks, glad you like the blog. I think we might be leaving the long, long 'brown' phase – yesterday Cakey told me she doesn't like brown! That's a first. I almost laughed when I realised I was defending the colour brown.

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