Mixing guide
How to mix purple
Most attempts at purple come out gray-brown. The fix is picking a cool red instead of a warm one.
Purple is the mixture people most often fail at, and the reason is nearly always the red. A warm, orange-leaning red like cadmium red light contains yellow, and yellow is the opposite of purple, so the mixture cancels itself into a brownish gray before it gets anywhere.
Use a cool red — alizarin crimson or quinacridone rose — and the same blue suddenly gives a clean violet. This is the clearest demonstration there is of why a split-primary palette, with a warm and a cool version of each primary, is worth the extra tubes.
Mixed purple is also duller than the tube version, and that is usually a feature. Dioxazine purple straight from the tube overwhelms almost any painting it lands in.
The mixtures
Each one worked out on a real palette with the spectral model. The number after the mixture is how far it lands from the target: under 2 you cannot see the difference, under 4 it does not matter in a painting.
Clean violet #6B4E9E
Irises, dusk sky, the saturated end of the range.
4× Phthalo Blue +4× Titanium White +1× Quinacridone Rose
9× Ultramarine +3× Titanium White +1× Alizarin Crimson (permanent)
7× Phthalo Blue +5× Viridian +2× Quinacridone Rose
Thin wash, roughly 1 part paint to 3 parts water.
Muted mauve #8A7590
Distant hills, shadow on a white wall at sunset.
3× Titanium White +1× Phthalo Blue
10× Titanium White +1× Ivory Black +1× Alizarin Crimson (permanent)
10× Payne’s Gray +1× Quinacridone Rose +1× Burnt Umber
Very thin wash, roughly 1 part paint to 9 parts water.
Deep purple shadow #3E3050
A dark that keeps its color instead of going to black.
8× Phthalo Blue +3× Quinacridone Rose +1× Cadmium Yellow Light
10× Ultramarine +3× Burnt Sienna
6× Phthalo Blue +5× Burnt Sienna +1× Quinacridone Rose
Full wash.
Worth remembering
- Cool red plus ultramarine for a warm violet; cool red plus phthalo blue for a colder, more electric one.
- Purple in shadow rarely wants to be saturated. A trace of yellow ochre knocks it back without killing it.
- If your purple looks gray, your red is too warm. Change the red, not the ratio.
Your paints, your photo
These mixtures assume the palettes above. Tick off what you actually own and pick the color straight out of your reference instead.