How to Make a Zorn Palette Mixing Chart: Understand Your Colours Deeply

Note: Remember last year when I explained how to paint the colour wheel? Here's another chart that can be very helpful for your paint mixing!

If you are a bit of a colour geek like I am, the following might be a wonderfully exciting challenge for you. I have to admit mixing the basics took me about two hours. (I think I was really careful with the percentage proportions!)

The Zorn Palette — consisting of Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red Light (or Vermilion), and Ivory Black — offers surprisingly rich and subtle colour mixing possibilities. An easy way to understand them is by painting a mixing chart. A mixing chart not only helps you preview what the palette can do — it becomes a powerful tool for learning to mix nuanced skin tones, greys, greens, and warm neutrals without defaulting to high-chroma pigments.

This is what I used to create my mixing chart:

• An A3 sheet of 360 gsm watercolour paper

• A pencil and a ruler

• I used these colours in acrylic  (because they dry so quickly): Titanium White, Cad Red Light, Yellow Ochre and Ivory Black (which is a bit bluey!)

• A palette knife, both for mixing AND for applying to my chart

• A palette for mixing

• A jar of water (or oils/solvents if using oil paint)

Set Up Your Grid

1. Draw a grid with 4 columns and 4 rows (or more, if you want to include tints and tones).

2. Label the top of each column and the left of each row with your four colours:

White (W)    Yellow Ochre (YO)    Cadmium Red Light (R)    Ivory Black (B)

Each square in the chart will show the result of mixing the colour from the row with the one from the column.

Tip: Leave a little extra room below the grid if you'd like to experiment with tints (adding white) and tones (adding black or neutral grey).

Fill in the Pure Colours

Start by filling in the squares where a colour meets itself (the diagonal).

For example:

• YO + YO → pure Yellow Ochre

• R + R → pure Cadmium Red

• B + B → pure Ivory Black

• W + W → pure White (this square can be left blank or marked)

These swatches will form your “anchor” hues.

Mix Each Pair at 50/50

Now, start mixing the colours in the following pairs. Mix approximately 50% of each colour to fill in the corresponding squares. Pay attention to the results and record them!

• Yellow Ochre + Cadmium Red Light = a warm orange or peach colour. Great for skin tones!

• Yellow Ochre + Ivory Black = a muted, earthy green or olive tone

• Cadmium Red Light + Ivory Black = a rich, muted brown or burgundy tone

• Titanium White + Yellow Ochre = a warm, creamy or sand colour

• Titanium White + Cadmium Red Light = a light pink or warm peach tone

• Titanium White + Ivory Black = a soft grey-blue or cool light tone

As you mix each pair, think about these questions:

• Is the resulting colour warm or cool?

• Is it neutral, or does one colour dominate?

• What does it remind you of (skin, shadow, sky)?

Create Tints

For each of your mixes, you’ll now create a tint by adding varying amounts of Titanium White to each mixture. This will allow you to see how each colour behaves when lightened.

• Mix 50% of your base mix with 25% Titanium White 

• Mix 50% of your base mix with 50% Titanium White 

• Mix 50% of your base mix with 75% Titanium White 

If you want, you can give these tints a colour name (think: coral, bubblegum pink, spring green). What's important here is that these tints will show you how each colour shifts in lighter values... which is important for painting light and highlights!

Do this particularly with:

• B + YO → to get sage greens and golden greys

• R + YO → to see how it turns into coral or peach

• R + B → for dusky purples and shadows

Observe the Neutrals

Now, let’s explore how to make neutral tones with the Zorn Palette. Mix the three colours (Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red Light, and Ivory Black) in equal parts.

Record your results:

• Yellow Ochre + Cadmium Red Light + Ivory Black = a warm, neutral brown

• Add Titanium White to the neutral mix:

o    50% neutral + 50% White = _______

o    75% neutral + 25% White = _______

This is where you start to discover some of the magic! You'll create cool, dusty lavenders; muted flesh tones; charcoal greys with depth; and milky taupes and olive greens. These mixes are incredibly useful for figurative and portrait work as they are soft, complex, and natural-looking without the artificial feel of unmixed tube colours.

Label Everything

Don’t skip this step! Label the chart clearly so you can refer back to it when mixing for real paintings. Make sure to list which colours were used and their approximate ratios or percentages. You can even add notes like “great for underpainting,” or "I can use this for shadow tone” or “wow, this is a cool highlight!”

Over time, your chart becomes a personal colour dictionary — something you can revisit anytime you feel stuck or unsure while mixing.

Why This Chart Matters

Making a Zorn Palette mixing chart helps train your eye and hand to help understand temperature shifts (warm to cool), to control value more precisely, to build harmony with limited choices, to create convincing and more natural-looking colours without high-chroma tubes, and to mix cleanly (i.e. no more accidental mud!).

As you continue to paint, refer back to your Zorn Palette Mixing Chart. It’s a handy guide to help you select and mix colours quickly, while keeping your palette cohesive and harmonious. Once you’re comfortable with these basic mixes, try adding a bit more of one colour to shift the temperature (more yellow for warmth or more black for coolness). In particular, if you are into portrait painting or still life paining, you’ll find that this minimal palette brings a remarkable sense of warmth and cohesion to your compositions. Most importantly, it gives you confidence that these four humble pigments can create an astonishingly rich and nuanced world.

Final Thoughts

Working with a limited palette is one of the fastest ways to become a better painter.

It might feel like a restriction at first — but the Zorn Palette teaches you to look more, mix smarter, and focus on what really makes a painting sing: value, harmony, and feeling.

So grab your paints, draw that grid, and start mixing. You’ll be surprised just how much colour you can coax out of so little.