If you are new to painting, consider starting with acrylics. Acrylics are a forgiving and easy-to-mix medium, and you can usually buy them in small, cheap squeeze-bottles. If you buy your paint at an art supply store, ask the staff which products will blend well into turquoise. They might be able to suggest specific green and blue hues that are ideal for mixing the shade you want, but do not rely on this. Know which shades you’re looking for going in.
Phthalo blue and phthalo green pigments are some of the most commonly-used in turquoise paints, and they give the purest form of turquoise. Phthalo blue (short for the pigment phthalocyanine) contains a strong green bias, so it is optimally suited for mixing turquoise. Many commercial paint brands feature a “phthalo blue” product. [4] X Research source Blue paint contains either red pigments or green pigments. If a given blue pigment has a green bias, it contains more green pigment than red pigment. Other (typically purplish) blue pigments have a red bias, and these will be less suited to making turquoise. You can’t find a “pure” blue paint pigment – that is to say, a blue paint hue that will make both a good green (when mixed with yellow) and a good purple (when mixed with red). This is because the blue will always have a bias towards either red or green due to the chemical impurities within each pigment.
If you don’t already have green paint, you’ll need to make it. Mix equal increments of blue and yellow to create green. If you don’t have a dedicated painting palette, feel free to mix your paints on any clean, dry surface. Try mixing paint on a plate, a sheet of paper, a strip of cardboard, or a piece of tile. Make sure that you aren’t painting over something important.
Slightly more green paint—say, a 2:1. 5 ratio of blue to green—will give you a deep sea-green turquoise. Slightly less green paint (than the 2:1 ratio) will mix a subtle turquoise that is nearly true-blue. Consider adding a dash of yellow paint for a brighter shade. Try a 1:5 or 1:6 ratio of yellow to blue. Mix the yellow in with the blue and the green. Add a bit of white paint if the shade is too bright. White will pale and subdue the turquoise hue so that it isn’t so visceral.
Make sure that you use as much paint as you need – or even slightly more. If you try to add more blue and green midway through the painting process, you may confound the ratio and wind up with an uneven shade of turquoise.
If you mix in more blue/green paint midway through, but you can’t get the ratio quite as it was: consider mixing a large amount of the new hue, then painting over all of the original turquoise to even things out.
Remember – until you start painting, you can always adjust the pigment ratio in your turquoise. Make sure that you’re satisfied before you settle down to paint. Make sure to use at least as much paint as you’ll need to complete your project. It can be a complex process to try to replicate paint-mixture ratios once you’ve already painted half of the piece.
