Mixing recipe
How to mix navy blue
Target
#303C6B
Recipe mixes to #303D6C
Navy is a dark blue with a little grey in it. Ultramarine is the base, Cerulean Blue lifts and cools it, and one part of Ivory Black takes the chroma down. Ultramarine straight from the tube is too violet for navy; the Cerulean corrects that. All three tubes are in a common box.
The recipe
Step by step
Build the pile from the biggest, lightest component and work toward the strongest tinter. Check the pile against each swatch before moving on.
- Start with 8 parts Ultramarine Bluepile #363258
- Work in 3 parts Cerulean Bluepile #303A86
- Work in 1 part Ivory Blackpile #303D6C
Another route
Replacing the black with a part of Alizarin Crimson lands a little further off and gives a slightly warmer navy, nearer the color of dark denim. Use it when the navy sits against warm colors or skin.
What goes wrong
The two blues are transparent and look nearly black in a pile; judge them in a thin smear. Ivory Black is a strong tinter and in this mix a part too much turns navy to slate. Add it last and in halves. If the result looks violet, more Cerulean; if it looks green, more Ultramarine. Ivory Black (tinting strength 4, where a cadmium is 1) is the paint to be careful with here: it goes in last, a knife-tip at a time, and a little too much cannot be mixed back out.
Related colors
Results vary with brand, lighting and medium. Acrylic dries a touch darker than it looks wet. Treat this as a mixing aid, not a lab instrument: it tells you which tubes to reach for and roughly in what proportion. Fine-tune the last stretch by eye.