How to Mix a Tropical Aqua Color for Harmonious Paintings

The water in Tulum has a color that stops me in my tracks every single time. That luminous, impossible aqua where blue meets green meets warm sand light. In this post, I walk through exactly how to mix that color using standard paints anyone can find at their local art store, and then how to use it as a keying color to bring an entire painting into harmony. The principle behind this technique goes far beyond one color. It’s about finding the colors that move you in the places that inspire you, and bringing them back to the canvas

______________________________________

 

How to Mix That Beautiful Tulum Water Color (And Use It to Harmonize an Entire Painting)

There are places in the world that have a color you can’t stop thinking about.

For me, Tulum is one of them. Specifically, the water.

That luminous, shifting aqua. The way the light filters down through the blue, hits the warm white sand below, and reflects back up toward the surface. It’s not quite blue. It’s not quite green. It has this warmth in it that feels almost impossible for water to carry.

I’ve been drawn to that color for years. Recently, I finally sat down and worked out exactly how to mix it.

 

 

Why Place and Color Are Inseparable for Me

Before getting into the recipe, it’s worth pausing on something.

For me, it’s always about the colors of places.

Every location I love has a color signature. A particular quality of light and hue that is specific to that place and no other. The high desert has its crystalline shadows and sage-dusted earth tones. Baja has its raw, earthy warmth and that particular quality of coastal light. And Tulum has that water.

When I notice the color that draws me to a place, and then learn to mix and work with that color in the studio, something remarkable happens. The painting carries the feeling of that place. Not just visually. Emotionally.

That connection between color, place, and feeling is one of the most powerful tools I have as an artist.
 

The Tulum Water Color Recipe

The good news is that this color doesn’t require specialty paints. These are all standard colors available at any art store.

Here’s what you need.

Cerulean blue is the foundation. It has that particular quality of blue that reads as water rather than sky. Clean and clear without being cold.

Phthalo green is the essential second ingredient. This is the color that shifts the blue toward aqua and gives it that tropical quality. A little goes a long way. Add it gradually.

Yellow ochre is the ingredient most people wouldn’t think to reach for, and it’s the one that makes all the difference. The warm sand of Tulum sits beneath that water, and the light passing through the blue and green picks up that warmth on its way back up. Yellow ochre captures that quality. Without it, the color reads as too clean, too saturated, too artificial. With it, the color comes alive.

White lifts the value and opens the color up toward that lighter, shallower water quality near the shore.

Cadmium yellow light can be added in small amounts when you want to push the color toward that warm, bright aqua you see in the shallower areas where the sand is closest to the surface.
 

How to Mix It

I start with cerulean blue as the base. Then I add white to begin lifting the value. From there I introduce phthalo green gradually, watching how the color shifts from blue toward aqua. Yellow ochre goes in next to warm it and take the edge off the saturation. Finally I adjust with cadmium yellow light if I want more warmth and brightness in the mix.

The range this gives you is significant. On the lighter end, you get that pale, warm aqua of shallow tropical water near the shore. Push it toward more blue and less white, and you arrive at the deeper, richer tones of open water further out.

Both ends of that range are useful. Both are beautiful.
 

Using the Color to Key an Entire Painting

Here is where this technique becomes something more than a color recipe.

Once I have my Tulum water color mixed, I use it as a keying color to bring an entire painting into harmony.

The idea is straightforward. I take whatever other colors I’m working with in the painting, whether that’s a warm red, a saturated green, a bright yellow, and introduce a small amount of the aqua color into each of them. Not enough to change their identity. Just enough to establish a shared undertone across the whole painting.

What happens is remarkable. Colors that would otherwise feel unrelated start to breathe together. The red carries a hint of aqua. The green does too. The yellow has a coolness in it that ties it back to the water color. And when you bring all of those colors together in the painting, everything harmonizes.

The whole piece starts to feel like it was painted in that particular quality of Tulum light. Because in a sense, it was.
 

The Larger Invitation

There is something worth sitting with in all of this.

The colors that move me most are almost always tied to places that move me. The two things are inseparable. When I find myself drawn to a particular location, a particular quality of light or water or landscape, that response is not incidental. It’s information about what brings me alive as an artist.

Paying attention to that. Mixing those colors. Building paintings around them. That’s not just a technical exercise. It’s a way of staying connected to what genuinely inspires me.

And sometimes, the most powerful thing I can do for my art is simply go to that place.

This fall, I’m taking a small group of artists to two locations that do exactly this for me. The Mayan Riviera in Mexico, where that Tulum water is waiting, along with all that earthy color and wildness and incredible food. And Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the high desert, with its crystalline light and sage and those enormous skies.

Both retreats are in November. The Mexico retreat begins November 6th. Santa Fe quickly follows on November 15th.

If either of these places has been calling to you, I’d love to have you join us. Click here to learn more about both retreats and see if one of them is a yes for you.
 

Now It’s Your Turn

Is there a place where you find yourself drawn back to again and again because of the colors? A location that has a particular quality of light or color that shows up in your work whether you intend it to or not?

Share it in the comments below. I’d genuinely love to know where your colors come from.