Earth tones are some of the most useful and beautiful colours you can have on your palette. From warm browns and muted greens to dusty reds and soft ochres, earth tones help create realistic landscapes, natural-looking portraits, and still life paintings.
You can purchase tubes of browns, reds, and yellows that work well, especially for landscapes, but they are not always the exact colour you need. This post is about adjusting these colours and making some of your own to get the desired colour for your painting.
You do not need dozens of expensive paint tubes to create rich earth tone colours. With a basic acrylic palette and a little colour mixing knowledge, you can mix a huge range of earthy shades yourself.
I’ll go over how to mix earth tones, which colours work best, and a few simple tricks that make your mixtures look more natural and less muddy. I primarily work in acrylics, but these mixes will work for any medium.
I have also included a printable mixing chart at the end of this post. There are many more mixing possibilities; these are just a few of the more common ones.
What Are Earth Tone Paint Colours?
Earth tones are colours inspired by nature. Think of soil, rocks, clay, forests, dried grasses, tree bark, sand, and autumn leaves.
Some common earth tone colours include:
- Burnt sienna
- Raw umber
- Burnt umber
- Ochre
- Olive green
- Terracotta
- Warm beige
- Rust
- Taupe
- Dusty browns
- Muted greens
- Soft warm greys
These colours tend to feel warm, calming, and natural.
Why Artists Love Earth Tones
Many famous artists relied heavily on earthy palettes, including Rembrandt, Johannes Vermeer, and Andrew Wyeth. Why? Because earth tones are very versatile and add warmth and depth to a painting.
Earthy colours can be used to tone down overly bright colours, create realistic shadows, unify a painting, and create atmosphere and mood in a painting.
They are not just used in landscapes or still life paintings. Earth tone colours are often used in portrait painting and in abstracts as well.
Basic Colours You Need to Mix Earth Tones
You can mix a surprising number of earthy colours using just a few acrylic paints.
A simple beginner-friendly palette includes:
- Ultramarine Blue
- Cadmium Red or Primary Red
- Yellow Ochre
- Burnt Sienna
- Titanium White
- Mars Black
You can also add:
- Raw Umber
- Burnt Umber
- Sap Green
- Payne’s Grey
These colours give you a strong foundation for creating warm neutrals and muted natural shades.
Understanding How to Make Earthy Colours
The secret to mixing earth tones is learning how to mute colours.
Bright colours become more earthy when you tone them down with complementary colours or add brown or grey.
For example:
Bright green becomes olive green when you add red or burnt sienna
Orange becomes terracotta when muted with blue
Bright blue becomes stormy blue-grey when mixed with brown
The goal is usually a softer, more natural-looking colour rather than a highly saturated colour.
How to Mix Brown Acrylic Paint
Brown is one of the most important earth tones.
The simplest way to make brown is by mixing complementary colours. Complementary colours are opposite each other on the colour wheel.
Try These Brown Mixtures:
Red + Green
For example, Cadmium Red Medium and Sap Green create a rich, dark brown.
Blue + Orange
This is a warmer brown than the one above. You can use an orange straight from the tube or make your own orange. Mix Cadmium Red Medium and Cadmium Yellow Medium to make orange, and then add Ultramarine blue a little at a time until you get the colour you want.
Yellow + Purple
Mix Cadmium Red with Ultramarine Blue to make purple. You can use Dioxazine Purple if you have it. Add Cadmium Yellow to make brown.
You can add more yellow to make it lighter or more blue to deepen the colour.
Warm and Cool Browns
To get a warm brown, add more red, burnt sienna, or yellow ochre.
To get a cooler brown, add a touch more of ultramarine blue, Payne’s grey, or a tiny touch of black.
For more information about how to make brown, see my post How to Make Brown
Mixing Olive Green
Olive green is one of the most useful earth-tone colours for landscapes and botanical paintings because it appears naturally in nature and helps create a more realistic painting. Olive green is a muted, earthy green that resembles the colours found in real foliage, moss, tree leaves, grasses, and distant hills.
It works especially well for painting natural shadows in greenery, soft background foliage, forest scenes, and muted botanical subjects where vibrant greens can look artificial or overpowering.
Adding more yellow creates grassy tones, while extra blue gives a deeper, woodsy feel. A touch of white can enhance sage and eucalyptus shades popular in modern botanical art.
In landscape painting, olive green is excellent for creating atmospheric depth. Bright greens tend to move forward visually, but muted olive tones naturally recede, making them perfect for distant trees, rolling hills, and background vegetation.
Easy Olive Green Recipe
To get an olive green mix, Cadmium Yellow with Ultramarine Blue to get a green colour. Add tiny touches of Burnt Sienna until you get the colour you want.
Experiment with whatever green paint you have, or any yellows and blues, to see what colour you get. Don’t forget to record the mixes in your colour swatching book for future reference.
You can add some white to this mix to get a softer sage colour.
I have a blog post dedicated to mixing various shades of green if you want to experiment with more green colours.
How to Mix Beige and Taupe
Beige and taupe are soft, neutral colours that are often used in backgrounds, portraits, and abstract paintings. These shades help warm up a painting without drawing too much attention away from the main subject.
To mix beige, start with Titanium White and gradually add a small amount of brown, such as Burnt Umber or Raw Umber. Be sure to use small amounts of Umber, as it can quickly overwhelm the white paint.
Add a small amount of Yellow Ochre to warm the paint mixture and create a more natural-looking beige. For cooler beige tones, add the tiniest hint of grey or blue. I like to use Payne’s grey for this because it has blue undertones.
Taupe is slightly deeper and cooler than beige. To create taupe, start with Burnt Umber and add white, then add a touch of blue, grey, Payne’s grey or even a muted purple. Taupe can range from warm mushroom tones to cooler greige shades, depending on the colours you use. Add more white to get a lighter version or more blue or grey to get a darker colour.
Mixing Terracotta and Rust Colours
Terracotta shades are warm, earthy reds with an orange-brown hue.
Start with a Cadmium Red and add yellow to make orange. Add a small amount of Burnt Umber to tone it down. You can add a little white to lighten the colour if it is too dark.
Adding a little Yellow Ochre or Burnt Sienna to this mix is also good for creating that sun-baked clay appearance often associated with terracotta pottery and adobe walls.
Rust colours are typically deeper and slightly darker than terracotta. To create rust tones, mix Cadmium Orange (or mix your own orange) with Burnt Sienna, then add a touch of black, ultramarine blue, or Raw Umber to deepen the colour. Adjusting the balance between red, orange, and brown will allow you to create everything from bright coppery rust shades to deep aged metal tones.
These mixes can be adjusted by adding a little more red or a little more brown to get the colour you want. If you are working with acrylics, they will dry slightly darker, while watercolours will dry slightly lighter.
Experiment with them on your palette or paper and let them dry slightly before you commit them to your canvas.
How to Avoid Muddy Colours
One of the biggest frustrations beginners have when mixing earth tones is accidentally creating muddy paint. There are a few things you can do to avoid making mud.
- Limit the number of colours you use to mix your earth tones. Try not to mix more than two or three colours together at once. Mixing too many colours together will give you a dull greyish brown or even black.
- Add darker colours a little at a time. Blue and black are intense and can quickly overwhelm your paint mix. Start by adding a tiny amount and add more in small increments until you achieve the colour you want.
- Clean your brush or palette knife after adding each colour. Dirty brushes or palette knives can contaminate your paint and lead you to mix dull or unsatisfactory colours.
- I recommend mixing a small amount of your desired colour at first. Once you have figured out the paint ratio, you can mix a larger amount so you don’t waste paint.
- Also, I like to keep a “recipe book” of paint mixes to keep for future reference. A sketchbook, or watercolour book, works for this. Swatch the paint mix you made in the book and write underneath it what paints you used and in what ratio.
For a deeper understanding of muddy colours, read my post on avoiding muddy colours.
Learning how to mix earth tones with acrylic paint can completely change the look of your paintings. These colours add warmth, realism, mood, and harmony in a way that bright colours alone often cannot.
The more you experiment, the easier it becomes to recognize how different colours influence each other. Some of the most beautiful earthy shades happen through experimentation.
Over time, you’ll develop your own favourite earth-tone palette that suits your painting style. As with anything, practice will improve your colour mixing and colour choices. Understanding how colours interact and how to manipulate paint to achieve the colour you want will improve your skills and make your art that much more enjoyable.
If you have questions, you can leave them in the comments below. You can also join our free Facebook group, Trembeling Art Creative Corner, where you can ask questions, post your work and get to know some fantastic artists from all genres and skill levels. 😊