The faded garden mural
Restore each section by mixing paint. Levels unlock in order. Your progress lives only on this page (it resets if the page reloads).
Restore each section by mixing paint. Levels unlock in order. Your progress lives only on this page (it resets if the page reloads).
Note: digital paint mixing is an approximation. Screens make color by adding light (RGB, additive), while real paint absorbs light (subtractive). Real paints also vary by brand and pigment.
Your recipe:
Which color do you expect this recipe to make? Tap one.
The garden mural on this old brick wall has faded, and you are the restorer: mix paint to match each faded section, one at a time, using as few drops and mixes as you can.
Set drops of red, yellow, blue, white and black with the − / + buttons, predict the color you'll get, then tap Mix & paint and watch the result.
Tip: “How it works” shows the mixing rules, and “Color wheel” shows complements. Use Worksheet for questions and My work to turn in your answers. Worksheet work saves on this device; game progress resets on reload.
You add 0 to 10 drops of each paint. Only the ratio matters: 2 red + 2 yellow makes exactly the same color as 1 red + 1 yellow.
The primary colors (red, yellow, blue) are mixed with the painter’s red-yellow-blue color cube (Gossett and Chen, 2004). Each corner of the cube is a color:
Your primaries pick a point inside the cube. For each primary:
The color is a blend of the 8 corners, weighted by how close the point is to each (trilinear blending, done in linear light). The square root models strong pigments: a small share of paint still has a big effect.
So: red + yellow = orange, yellow + blue = green, red + blue = violet, and all three = dark brown.
Complements are colors opposite each other on the color wheel: red–green, yellow–violet, blue–orange. Mixed together they dull each other toward brown or gray, because together they contain all three primaries.
A tint is a color plus white: lighter and less intense. White is blended in by its share of the drops. Blue is a strong pigment, so in a tint each blue drop counts 2 times.
A shade is a color plus black. Black absorbs light, so it mixes subtractively: it multiplies each color channel down. Our black is a dark, slightly blue pigment (screen color ) and it is strong: each black drop counts 2 times. Because it lets a little more blue-green light through than red, black + yellow drifts toward olive green, as many real black paints do.
Colors are converted to CIELAB: L* = lightness (0 black to 100 white), a* = green (−) to red (+), b* = blue (−) to yellow (+). Intensity (C*) is how far the color is from gray, and hue is its angle (h°).
Each target was made from its own recipe with this same model, so the right recipe always matches exactly (ΔE = 0).
★★★ for a match on your 1st mix, ★★ on the 2nd, ★ on the 3rd. +★ bonus if you used the fewest possible drops. Each section allows 3 mixes.
Light mixes additively (RGB): red + green light makes yellow on a screen. Paint mixes subtractively: each pigment absorbs some light, so red + green paint makes brown. This simulation is an approximation of real paint.
Primaries: red, yellow, blue. Secondaries sit between them. Complements sit directly opposite. Tap a color to see its complement and what they make when mixed.