What Are the Essential Acrylic Colors Every Artist Needs For Vivid, Fluid Painting?

By some estimates, there are 10 million colors in the universe, 1 million of which humans can see. That’s not an exaggeration — there are millions of colors we can see, even though most of us only know the 12 basic colors present on the color wheel.

As an artist, you’ll desire certain hues for your project. Thankfully, you can buy pre-mixed colors that come in a fuller rainbow of hues. Common colors you should have in your toolkit are all available in versatile, fluid art acrylic paints, such as in the Benicci 24-color set!

Brief Introduction to the Color Wheel

The color wheel’s primary colors are red, yellow, and blue. The secondary colors, which are made through combinations of the primary colors, are green, orange, and purple. The tertiary colors are created by combining the primary and the secondary colors and include yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green, and yellow-green.

All of the named colors that are not primary or secondary colors are derivatives of these hues, created by varying proportions of each ingredient, as well as white and black. For example, lavender is purple with a higher white component.

An Acrylic Rainbow

Kits such as the Benicci 24-color set include the essential hues that every artist should know. For example, there’s viridian, a rich, deep green, and ultramarine, the hue of blue that’s closest to purple. There’s vermillion, an orangey-red, and cerulean, a lovely blue reminiscent of robin’s eggs.

By having these pre-mixed colors on your palette, you can easily find the perfect fluid hue for painting pretty much anything!