Short answer: gold is mostly yellow with a bit of orange and a touch of brown. A good starting recipe is about 4 parts yellow, 1 part orange and a tiny dot of brown. Adjust from there until it looks warm and rich. That mix gives you a gold-colored paint. It won't be shiny like real metal, but with a few tricks it can look like it is.
Below are the mixes, the shades, and how to color gold on a page so it looks like a metal and not just flat yellow.
Gold sits between yellow, orange and brown. Here are three ways to get there, from simplest to most flexible.
Brown dulls the color and makes it look less like lemon and more like metal. Add it very slowly: a little goes a long way.
If you don't have orange or brown, make them. Start with yellow, add a small touch of red to warm it, then a speck of blue to dull it. Blue and orange are opposites on the color wheel, so a tiny bit of blue pulls the mix toward brown. Learn more in what colors make brown.
Yellow's complement is purple. A very small amount of purple added to yellow will soften and darken it to an old gold. Use even less than you think you need.
These are rough guides. Paints differ, so test on scrap paper first.
| You want | Try |
|---|---|
| Classic gold | Yellow + a little orange + a tiny bit of brown |
| Light gold, champagne | Classic gold + white, plus a dot of beige or tan |
| Rich, deep gold | More orange and brown in the mix |
| Antique or old gold | Classic gold + more brown, plus a touch of green or purple |
| Rose gold | Pink or light red-orange + a little brown + white |
| Greenish gold, olive gold | Yellow + a little green + a touch of brown |
Why do the golds shift so much? Because there's no single "gold" color. Gold is a family of warm, deep yellows, and which one looks right depends on what you're drawing. A crown can be a bright gold. An old coin is a duller, browner gold.
Real metal looks shiny because its surface bounces light in a mirror-like way. Mixed paint is matte or satin, so it can't do that. Metallic paints, gel pens and markers get a sparkle by adding tiny reflective flakes. If you want real shine, buy a gold metallic paint, pen or pencil and use it on top.
You don't have to, though. Artists have drawn convincing gold for centuries with ordinary colors, using light and dark contrast.
The secret to gold is contrast. Metal has bright highlights right next to dark shadows. Flat yellow looks like plastic. Try this:
For more on layering, see how to color with colored pencils and coloring techniques.
If you want actual shine:
Tip: put the metallic color on top of a regular yellow or orange base. It looks richer than metallic alone, and you save pen ink.
Gold works as an accent color. Try it on:
Gold also pairs well with deep colors like navy, burgundy and forest green, which make it stand out. If you want a coloring page that looks special, try one in dark colors with gold highlights.
The crayon or pencil called gold in a set is a premade metallic. If your set has it, use it. If it doesn't, you can still get the look with a yellow, an orange and a brown layered together, as above. Our guide to the color mixing chart shows how those colors relate on the wheel.
What colors make yellow? In paint, yellow is a primary color you can't mix; on screens, red and green light make it. How to mix gold, mustard and lemon.
What colors make pink? Red and white. How to mix baby pink, hot pink, magenta, coral, salmon, rose and dusty pink with paint, crayons and colored pencils.
What is a mandala? The word means circle in Sanskrit. Where mandalas come from, what their shapes and colors are often said to mean, and how to color one.