Hue & Value Matrix
Mixing Metaphors · workbench

Hue & Value Matrix

Pick the colours on your palette, anywhere from six to all twelve steps of the wheel. Each one becomes a column, stepped from light to dark at matched values, so every swatch in a row has the same value whatever its hue.

Your spectrum · Sloan order

Yellow

Settings
Your white
Your black

This is an example six-colour palette. Click a slot to change it to your own paints.

Hue × value
your colour at its own value mixed from neighbours row number = value step, L* = lightness

Every swatch in a row shares one lightness (CIE L*), tinted toward your white or shaded toward your black. Click any swatch to copy its hex. Click a column heading to edit that slot.

Part of Mixing Metaphors. Values in CIE L*. Paint mixing by Mixbox © Secret Weapons, used under CC BY-NC 4.0 (non-commercial).
Paint hex values are approximate: a hand-gathered list, Winsor & Newton chart values from color-term.com, and Golden's measurements of Williamsburg oils. None are endorsed by the makers.
Idea by Jim Kingston, assembled with Claude.

Choose a paint

Approximate colours. These hex values come from three places: your own list, gathered by hand online; Winsor & Newton colour-chart values published on color-term.com; and Golden Artist Colors' lab measurements of Williamsburg oils. None of the screen colours are supplied or endorsed by the makers, batches vary, and no screen shows real paint exactly. The measured Williamsburg values are of thick paint, so transparent colours such as Ultramarine read nearly black. Check everything against your own painted swatches.

Harmonious colour

Colours look like they belong together when they share the same parent paints. Every colour in this matrix is mixed from the paints on your wheel, so they share pigments, and that shared family is what holds them together.

Turning the intensity down

The semi-neutrals (B) and neutrals (C) are mixed from your full-intensity colours, as in John Sloan's triangle. They get quieter but stay in the same family, so a painting built on them holds together.

Colours from outside the family

A tube paint you add for an in-between slot isn't mixed from your other paints. It brings in a pigment the rest don't have, so it stands apart. That can be the accent you want, but use it on purpose and sparingly.

To keep it harmonious

Fill just the three primaries, or the six main slots, and let the app mix the rest. On the palette, mix new colours from your family rather than reaching for another tube.