Hello fellow art enthusiasts and curious minds! Following our exploration of “What Do Yellow and Purple Make?,” we’re diving deep into another fascinating color combination: red and green. Let’s conduct a hands-on investigation to answer the question: What happens when you mix red and green together?
I’ll demonstrate the answer using various techniques, adding valuable insights to our expanding color mixing chart. The results might just surprise you and enhance your future creative drawings.
The Primary Result: Red and Green Make Brown
As illustrated above, the most common outcome of mixing red and green is brown. In this digital demonstration, I used Procreate on my iPad, combining red and green with the “Airbrush” tool and then blending them with the “Smudge” tool. (Hope you enjoy the easy, cute drawings of faces adding a touch of whimsy to each color!)
The striking aspect is how two vibrant and bright colors combine to create such a muted and dark tone. The resulting brown is so deep it nearly blends with the black background! Let’s delve into further experiments to enrich the colors in your artistic endeavors.
Beyond Brown: Exploring Other Hues from Red and Green
Inspired by our previous exploration of “What Does Purple and Green Make?,” where we discovered multiple color mixing outcomes, I wanted to investigate if red and green could yield more than just brown. It’s similar to our findings in “What Does Purple and Orange Make?,” where simple questions often have nuanced answers.
As you can see in the illustrations above (created with the “Marker” brush and “Smudge” tool, using finger pressure for deep mixing) and below (using the “Acrylic” paintbrush and smudging), the answer is indeed more complex than simply “brown.”
A Spectrum of Brown Shades
Mixing green and red actually produces a wide variety of brown shades. This expands the answer beyond a single color to include a spectrum of options such as khaki, tan, nude, skin tones, chocolate, and mud. (This idea could be a great addition to our art prompts list: Imagine the diverse illustrations you could create using different shades of brown!)
If you use a lighter shade of red, like pink, mixing it with green results in a tan color, as explored in “what color does pink and green make.” Furthermore, red and green can combine to produce a very deep, dark brown, almost indistinguishable from… black!
The Complementary Color Surprise: Black!
Yes, you read that right! While red and green typically make brown, choosing the right shades can even create black (how to make black). Why does this happen? Black is created by mixing all three primary colors: red, yellow, and blue (as shown in the illustration above). Green, being a secondary color, is composed of yellow and blue. Therefore, combining red and green essentially brings together all primary colors.
In other words, complementary colors, like red and green, can produce black when mixed, provided the pigmentation is balanced to harmonize all primary colors. To explore achieving neutral colors like black, gray, brown, and tan in more detail, check out my post on “what colors make brown.”
See my experiment below: I layered “Marker” brush strokes of green and red, initially producing black. Then, by smudging (at the heart shape’s bottom), I reduced the saturation or color intensity, revealing brown.
Conclusion: The Color Red and Green Make
So, there you have it! Red and green primarily make brown – a diverse range of browns from light to dark, depending on the specific shades used. They can also create black under the right conditions of color saturation and hue selection. I hope you’ve enjoyed this exploration into color mixing and found some art inspiration. Feel free to suggest any color combinations you’d like me to investigate next!
Want to explore more color mixes? Check out “What do Orange and Green Make?”
By Lillie Marshall
Lillie Marshall, the author and artist, is a National Board Certified Teacher of English with extensive experience in public education since 2003, and a certified Reiki practitioner since 2018. All artwork on this site is original, hand-drawn by Lillie. She launched DrawingsOf.com Educational Cartoons in 2020, expanding on the success of her other platforms, AroundTheWorldL.com (established 2009), TeachingTraveling.com (founded 2010), and ReikiColors.com. Subscribe to Lillie’s monthly newsletter and follow @WorldLillie on social media for updates!
