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Posted
Various ways - using complementaries, either by glazing with them or mixing directly into the colour, is one - eg, with yellow you'll get a darker tone with violet, but its depth will depend, obviously, on the violet. Or you can add brown in certain cases - this can be a bit mucky in my opinion. Or of course you can add a darker yellow - say Cadmium Yellow Deep with Lemon Yellow, or Yellow Ochre with a lighter yellow; or an orange. Yellow is an awkward customer, more so that anything else, because it does sully so easily - and both black and Payne's Grey will indeed give a deep green, not a darker yellow - sometimes a useful green, often not.
A green certainly darkens red, and vice versa. Blues - well on the whole I'd use a darker blue if I wanted to deepen it, but in theory you could use the complementary orange: but that can also give a (rather nasty) brown/green if you aren't careful with the proportions. Lightening a colour - depends on the colour: it's not easy and the best advice is to use brilliant colours to start with rather than have to lighten them, because whatever you do (e.g. adding white, or yellow/orange to red) is more likely to change the colour than actually brighten it, i.e. to produce tints.
Posted
Can't add much usefully to Robert's answer other than I find using black for shades in oils sometimes useful using Ivory Black for its transparent quality, but it should not be overdone, my first thought for deepening a colour is usually the complementary route. Lightening with white can give some unwanted results if overdone e.g. chalky finish if using Titanium White as well as altering the hue.
Edited
by Stub
Posted
Paynes, Neutral Tint, and Lamp Black were used in watercolour by the great Rowland Hilder, but I've never managed to employ them anything like so successfully as he did - he could apply a wash of Lamp Black over a green sea and make it look translucent. Seriously - you try that and see how you get on: I ended up with a sort of soup....
Paynes does have its place, especially the bluer varieties, and especially in precise paintings in all media, where sharp detail is needed. And you'll see that Alan Owen uses it quite often in his watercolour skies - must be the W & N colour or something like it, I would think; it does work as a very pale wash, but he has a knack with it: I'm still learning with watercolour, and I've not acquired it yet.