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For miniature and model painters

Mix any miniature color from artist paint

Pick a color on a painted model and get its recipe in parts from the artist acrylics you own: fluid and matte lines like Golden Fluid, High Flow and So-flat or Liquitex Soft Body. A few tubes instead of a shelf of pots.

Mixing data for

  • Golden
  • Liquitex
  • Amsterdam
  • Winsor & Newton
  • and more
Sign up freeTry the example

Built on years of mixing and measuring real artist paint. How it works

Painted Savage Orruks miniatures
99.4% match

11 Burnt Umber + 9 Titanium White + 3 Permanent Yellow + 2 Phthalo Blue (Green Shade)

Photo: Savage Orruks miniatures by Tobias Bomm (CC BY 2.0).
Example

See it on a real model

Drag the dropper onto any color and get its recipe. Sign up to do the same with a photo of your own model and the paints you already own.

Sign up free

This is just an example palette: six jars of Golden So-flat. Your own recipes use the paints you have, from any brand we have mixing data for.

  • Golden So-flat Titanium White, 59 ml jarTitanium White
  • Golden So-flat Permanent Yellow, 59 ml jarPermanent Yellow
  • Golden So-flat Naphthol Red Light, 59 ml jarNaphthol Red Light
  • Golden So-flat Quinacridone Magenta, 59 ml jarQuinacridone Magenta
  • Golden So-flat Phthalo Blue (Green Shade), 59 ml jarPhthalo Blue (Green Shade)
  • Golden So-flat Burnt Umber, 59 ml jarBurnt Umber
Match: 99%
Your mix
Picked color
Mix recipe
Permanent Yellow
12%
Titanium White
35%
Burnt Umber
45%
Phthalo Blue (Green Shade)
8%

Mix 11 Burnt Umber + 9 Titanium White + 3 Permanent Yellow + 2 Phthalo Blue (Green Shade).

Photos: Savage Orruks miniatures by Tobias Bomm (CC BY 2.0); model tank by Matias Luge (Pexels).

Why mix your own

A few tubes, every shade

A white, a yellow, a red, a magenta, a blue and a brown mix the colors of your pots and every color between them.

Recipes you can repeat

Every recipe is in parts by volume, like 6 Naphthol Red Light + 1 Burnt Umber. Mix the same color again for the next unit, months later.

Highlights that stay in hue

Lighten with Titanium White alone, not with a pot that already holds white and black, so a highlight keeps its color.

From the art store

Artist paint from an art supplier, matte like hobby paint, and not tied to one hobby brand or its range of pots.

The engine behind it

Years of mixing real paint, now for miniature painters

Trycolors started with artist painters. For years we have mixed real artist paint, painted it out on test cards and measured it with a spectrophotometer, tube by tube, and built a mixing engine on that data. It predicts what paints make together, not what colors on a screen average to.

Painters use it every day to mix from the tubes they own. The same engine computes every recipe on this page, so the miniature community can now use it too.

See how the engine works
A spectrophotometer measuring a green paint swatch on a test card, two acrylic tubes beside it.Test cards with yellow and blue tints painted out over white and black, the tubes below.

Well-known painters already paint with artist paints

Miniature painters on YouTube make the case for artist paints: cleaner mixes, every shade between two pots, highlights that keep their hue. They mix by eye, with years of color theory behind every guess. Trycolors does the guessing for you: pick the color, and get the recipe from the paints you can buy at your local art store.

The BEST Miniature Paint... Isn't Miniature Paint???Ninjon
Stop Using Miniature Paints NOW!Mana Potion Tabletop
Get the Most from Heavy Body Acrylics - HC 533Vince Venturella

Why artist paints mix cleaner than hobby pots

The label tells you what is inside. Artist paints list their pigments on the label, and most colors are made from a single pigment. That is what makes them predictable to mix.

A pot is a finished recipe. Hobby paints are built to cover in one coat, so a pot is usually several pigments, often with white or black added, plus a matting agent. Mix two pots and you also mix their hidden white and black, which is why pot mixes so often turn dull or dark. Single-pigment paints stay clean.

Is it cheaper? Per milliliter, artist acrylics cost less than hobby pots, and student lines a lot less. For a handful of colors the difference is small and pots win on convenience. Mixing pays off when you need thirty colors, or one no pot sells.

Conversion chart

Your Citadel colors from these six jars

20 popular Citadel Base colors, each mixed from the same six Golden So-flat jars, with the recipe in parts and how close it gets. Open any color for the full step-by-step recipe.

Open the conversion chart

Hobby pots from artist paints

Citadel paint conversion chart: Golden So-flat

20 Citadel Base colors, each mixed from the same 6 Golden So-flat jars, a recipe for each.

Trycolors Pro

Everything for your army

See plans and pricing

Every artist acrylic and oil

The full paint catalog: every line and every color of every brand, so your palette is the paints you really own. Free accounts see 10 paints per brand.

Unlimited recipes

A recipe for every color on the model, every time. Free accounts get 3 a day.

Adjust it in the mixer

In the mixer a recipe loads straight into your paints: change it part by part and see the color before you touch a brush.

Match any model paint

Pick a Citadel, Vallejo, Army Painter, Tamiya, AK or Mr. Hobby color from the catalog and get it from your own paints.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Citadel, Vallejo, Army Painter, Tamiya, AK and Mr. Hobby colors are in our catalog, and you can add them to your palette and mix them; for these the engine works from each pot's published color, so treat the result as a guide. But miniature paints are not made for mixing. Each pot is already a finished recipe of several pigments, often with white or black added, so mixing two of them adds all of that together and the color comes out muddy, darker and duller. Artist paints are made for mixing: most colors are a single pigment, so mixes stay clean.

No. The example on this page uses six jars of Golden So-flat because it dries matte like hobby paint, but your recipes use the paints you own: Golden, Liquitex, Amsterdam, Winsor & Newton and many other artist acrylics, fluid or heavy body.

Both work. Fluid and high flow lines are already close to the consistency you paint miniatures with; heavy body paint needs thinning with water or a medium. The recipe is the same either way, because it is in parts of paint.

It matches the color, not the pot's coverage or sheen. Thin the mix for brushwork, build it up in layers, and finish with a matte varnish if the rest of the army is matte. Metallics, washes and contrast paints are effects, not colors you can mix from artist paint.

Yes. The conversion chart has popular Citadel Base colors as recipes for free, and with Pro you can pick any color from the catalog, Citadel, Vallejo, Army Painter, Tamiya, AK or Mr. Hobby, and get it from your own paints.

A free account gets 3 recipes a day. Pro gives you unlimited recipes, the full paint catalog and recipes from your own photos. See the pricing page for the plans.

Mix your army from your own paints

Upload a photo of your model, choose the paints you own, and get every color as a recipe you can measure.

Sign up free
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