Warm vs Cool: How Two Colour Wheels Can Transform Your Mixing

Exploring Colour Temperature with Cobra Artist Water Mixable Oils

One of the most valuable things an artist can do when working with new paints is spend some time getting to know them. Before making a start on any commissioned or “official” art pieces, taking some time to swatch out your colours and experiment with how they mix can reveal so much about a palette. Building this familiarity and confidence ultimately makes the entire painting process far more intuitive and enjoyable.

While getting to know my new set of Cobra Artist Water Mixable Oils, I decided to set up these two temperature colour wheels – one uses warm primaries and the other cool primaries. These are always powerful visual reminders of just how much colour temperature can influence your colour mixes.

 Warm Biased Colour Wheel

What Do We Mean by “Warm” and “Cool”?

You don’t necessarily need a deep dive into colour theory  for this, but it certainly helps understand one simple idea: every colour carries a subtle temperature bias.

 Some colours lean slightly warmer (towards yellow or red), while others lean cooler (towards blue or violet). These difference can feel quite subtle when you look at a paint colour in isolation, but they become more noticeable when you begin mixing.

By painting two temperature colour wheels the impact of the temperature bias becomes immediately visible. Using the same structure for both wheels allows you to compare how the mixes behave across the colour spectrum.

For example:

• When the temperature of your colours works in harmony, your mixes tend to appear cleaner and more vibrant.
• When the temperature relationships oppose each other, in other words mixing a warm and a cool, the result often shifts towards softer, more muted tones.
• A really nice example of this can be seen when you mix yellow and blue primaries to create greens. Depending on the temperature of each pigment, you may end up with anything from a bright, fresh green to a more subdued, earthy version.

Neither are wrong nor right. Both outcomes are incredibly useful – what matters is the understanding so that you can achieve them intentionally.

  Cool Biased Colour Wheel

How This Impacts Your Artwork

I am all about practical exercises to gain insight and understanding. When you understand the temperature of your paints, you gain so much more control over the mood and harmony, or intentional disharmony, of your work.

• If you want fresh, luminous colours, choose primaries that work in alignment.
• If you want natural and atmospheric tones, allow temperatures to neutralize one another.
• If you want to avoid those muddy mixes, become more aware of the hidden temperature biases of your pigments.

Rather than feeling unpredictable, colour mixing starts to feel deliberate and responsive.

A Note on Mixing with Oils (and Those Deep Violets)

An interesting observation when working through these temperature colour wheels with oils, particularly the richly pigmented range of Cobra Artist Water Mixable Oils, is how deep and intense some of the mixtures become.

The violets, in particular, can appear quite dark when mixed at full strength and this is completely normal for oil paints which often carries a higher pigment load and depth than other mediums.

Adding white: even a small amount of white can reveal the undertone of a colour mixture. With oil paints I introduce white to soften strong pigments into more gentle and practical hues which can further expand your understanding of how that colour mixture behaves across values.

Think of white not just as a mixing colour to lighten pigments, but a way to unlock the full range within each mix.

Why This Exercise Matters

At a glance, painting colour wheels might feel like a foundational or even basic exercise but applied in your art practice it becomes one of the most powerful ways to build confidence with colour by allowing you to:

• Understand your materials before starting your painting
• Make more informed colour mixing decisions
• Develop a more intuitive relationships with your colour palette
• It also removes a lot of the frustration that can come from unexpected or muddy results.

Getting to Know Cobra Water Mixable Oils

This little colour wheel exploration offered a beautiful introduction to working with Cobra Water Mixable Oils which amazingly provides all the richness and blending capability of traditional oils, while allowing for water-based cleanup, making them a more accessible option for many artists. The pigments are vibrant, the mixing is smooth, and they respond beautifully to exercises like this where experimentation and observations are key.

We’re just Getting Started!

This little post merely scratches the surface of colour theory. Colour temperature, mixing and pigment behaviour are rich topics and there is so much more to explore: from selecting balanced palettes to understanding complementary colour relationships and building more advanced mixing strategies. In future content we will be diving deeper into these ideas to help you feel even more confident and in control of your colour.