Purple Oil Paint: Pigments, Basics, and How to Pick the Right Purple

Purple, like blue, is a color of status and wealth. Worn by Roman magistrates, Byzantine and Asian Emperors, Roman Catholic bishops, and Suffragettes. It is associated with majesty and magic. However, it is rarely found as a painted pigment in old master works.

This is due to three things: a purple pigment for paint does not exist in nature; blue, at the time, was a rare and an extremely high value pigment; and purple organic dye was very expensive and very fugitive as a paint pigment. By fugitive I mean it would fade like nobody's business.

Blue pigment was more expensive than gold, therefore using blue to mix purple was a status symbol. The purples that we see in old master works were mixed from blue, such as in the works by Giotto.

Purple dye dates back to the Phoenicians, Phoenicia meaning "land of purple." The organic Tyrian Purple dye was made from a small gland of the murex sea snail. Thousands of snails would be captured or bred, then with shells removed they would 

be soaked in water until bloated and their hypobranchial gland removed. The gland produces a white liquid that when placed in the sun would change color from white to yellow-green to green to purple to blood red if left long enough. 12,000 snails would only create 1.4 g of dye. Just enough to dye the trim of a garment. While Tyrian Purple created a long lasting, dynamic dye, as a pigment it would quickly and very expensively fade.  

Now that doesn't mean purple was not used, it was just very expensive to use. Much like orange and red, purple as a pigment did not come into its own until the 19th century when at eighteen William Henry Perkin created the first synthetic purple called mauve.

Top Characteristic: Purple can be used to create deep, full shadows, and is essential for botanical and nature painting. Look for purple shadows cast off of yellow buildings and plants.

Purple is sometimes considered to be one of the least necessary paint pigments to purchase, because it is so easy to mix. However, it is important to note that some purples, such as Cobalt Violet, cannot be mixed.

Pigment Numbers (PV#): Along with the paint names, I have also included the pigment numbers. Look for these numbers to make sure you are purchasing a true purple and not a cheaper mix, as purples can sometimes come with various names.

Cobalt Violet (PV14): Considered the first real violet, Cobalt Violet is a warm, transparent purple with an extremely weak tint that cannot be mixed using other pigments.

Because Cobalt Violet is so weak you will not always find it in its pure form, but rather mixed with its cleaner and stronger cousin Manganese Violet (PV16), which gives the paint more body, but the color does change slightly. Pure Cobalt, because it is so weak, mixes poorly and becomes gray, but as a final coat or glaze it sings.

Cobalt Violet was used by artists such as Monet and Seurat.

Manganese Violet (PV 16):  A stronger violet than Cobalt, Manganese Violet is a warm, transparent purple with a muted tint.

A little redder than Cobalt, Manganese can give an artist the strength and body that Cobalt lacks. When mixed with white it creates a warm lavender tint. It is considered to be the original mauve pigment.

Quinacridone Violet (PV 19): A synthetic pigment sold under many different names, Quinacridone Violet is an extremely red, warm, transparent purple with a strong tint.

When looking for this color particularly, check the paint label for the pigment number because its names are so varied.

Dioxazine Purple: One of the more versatile purples, Dioxazine is a cold, transparent purple, with a strong tint.

Considered the strongest tinter and most transparent of any pigment, Dioxazine is so dark (the sample swatch was painted extremely thinly so you could actually see the purple color) that it can be used as a deep black. It is advised to use it sparingly because it is so strong, but when used correctly it creates lovely purples and tints. It is also the most commonly used purple.
   
How to Pick the Right Purple 

Like orange, you can hold off on purchasing a purple until you have acquired some of the more necessary paints. That being said, I love having a Dioxazine Purple to work into dark backgrounds, and purples are necessary for botanical paintings.

Both the Lilly and Chuck Norris's backgrounds were painted first with Burnt Sienna, then Pthalo Blue, and finally darkened using Dioxazine Purple. 

Remember, when you are picking which purple to paint with always consider the following characteristics: color temperature and tinting strength (opacity doesn't really come into play as most purples are transparent). For a warm purple first consider Manganese Violet (depending on the provider the name can differ, check for the pigment number PV16) and for a cool purple Dioxazine Purple. 

For more about colors and their pigment characteristics take a look at my Tips and Techniques page.

Purple used throughout Art

Below are some wonderful examples of purple in art in the following order: Giotto, Fyodor Rokotov, John William Waterhouse, Van Gogh, Klimt, and David Hockney.

Color Temperature: A Pigment's Tell and a little bit about Blue

The other day I was wondering what the difference was between Ultramarine Blue and French Ultramarine Blue (because that is something normal people wonder about), and I learned something new about color temperature.

99% of the time the color temperature of a paint is easy to tell, but then there is that 1%. For me, it is with blues. I forget which is which and need to look them up. Before, in my head I classified colors into how close they were to blue or orange, blue being the coolest and orange being the warmest.

The problem that I ran into with trying to decide the temperature of Ultramarine and French Ultramarine, beyond that they are both blue and therefore cooler than most colors, is that they reside on opposite sides of "true blue." Does this make the both of them warm, since they are moving away from blue? But then how does that work with cool blues? I was confused and took to the internets.

I found a lovely little post from the American Society of Botanical Artists that explained the difference between warm and cool in a way that should have been obvious.

Most pigments will either have a green or red bias, not an orange or blue bias. Those with a green bias are cool while those with a red bias are warm. Thinking of warm and cool in this way simplifies, at least for me, color temperature.

Ultramarine has a slight green bias and therefore is cool. French Ultramarine leans towards violet with a slight red bias and therefore is warm. Ta da! Mystery solved! You can read more about their differences here.

You can also read about why color temperature is important for accurate lights and shadows here and check out my main Tips and Techniques page for more information about painting.

Red Oil Paint: Pigments, Basics, and How to Pick the Right Red

Red is the most important color in the world. Why? I have no idea, but for some reason when people of every culture and language were sitting around making up words for stuff, the color that everyone gave a name to first was the color red. Always, throughout time, red is the first and blue is the last.

Red, the color of sin, nobility, authority, ceremony, and revolution, was not a very versatile hue until the 20th century when Cadmium Red become available and then even later in the 1950s when the automobile industry created more dynamic reds with the creation of transparent hues. If only Turner, Friedrich, and Martin had such reds! Not that they did too badly with what they had.



I have rewritten this post here: 

https://www.katherinegriffinstudio.com/post/red-oil-paint-which-to-use-cadmium-red-naphthol-red-alizarin-crimson-or-quinacridone-red

This rewrite adds a little bit more meat to the discussion and some videos about red paint. 


Top Characteristic: Red is one of the hardest pigments to use well. In strict atelier schools painting a red fabric is one of the last things learned due to the difficulty of creating red highlights to not appear bright pink and shadows to not grow too dark and muddy.

Cadmium Red: Made from the same process that creates Cadmium Yellow and Orange, Cadmium Red is almost a neutral opaque red, with a slightly warm cast and creates strong tints.

Boasting a strong masstone, Cadmium Red is usually picked as a primary in most color palettes for its clean mixtures and strong secondaries.

Cadmium Red is the much needed, synthetic replacement for the very toxic pigment Vermillion, also known as Cinnabar, a mercury sulfide mineral and was used throughout ancient China, Greece, and Rome. The Pompeiian baths at Titus and the Villa of the Mysteries used Vermillion. In fact, in ancient Rome prisoners were forced to extract the pigment from mercury mines, who would then die after only a few years of exposure to the heavy metal.

Cadmium Red was used by artists such as Henri Matisse, Franz Marc, and Marc Chagall, and is sometimes marketed as Cadmium Red Medium.

Naphthol Red: An organic red, Naphtol Red (also spelt Napthol and Naphtol) is a warm, semi-transparent red that closely matches Cadmium Red in masstone and produces strong tints.

It is an excellent choice when you want the color of Cadmium without its strong, sometimes overwhelming opaque qualities. It is, however, not as lightfast as Cadmium.
Rothko used Naphthol Red is several of his paintings.

Alizarin Crimson Permanent: Anciently known as Madder Lake, Alizarin is a cool, transparent red with a muted tint.

Originally made from madder root and used to dye clothing, Alizarin is now synthetically produced. Sadly, true Alizarin has a poor lightfastness and should be avoided. Luckily, a few companies do produce permanent, lightfast options. While these permanent options due differ in chemical composition from a true Alizarin, the Permanent option is still an excellent match in masstone and transparency.

As THE cool red, Alizarin is used by everyone. Artists such as Velasquez, Turner, Rockwell, and even Bob Ross used Alizarin.

Quinacridone Red: A product of the automobile industry, Quinacridone Red is a cool, transparent red with a moderate tinting strength.

Quinacridone matches the opaque Cadmium Red Deep in masstone, but is useful when a true transparent red is wanted. Quinacridone also offers a lesser cool option to Alizarin that also provides stronger, brighter mixtures. Since its manufacture in the 1950s Quinacridone is a staple of almost all color palettes.

When wanting an opaque companion to Quinacridone, as stated before, consider Cadmium Red Deep.

How to Pick the Right Red 

Red is the most temperamental of all colors (yellow a close second) and is the color I recommend initially investing in the most. I have six reds: Cadmium Light, Medium, and Deep as well as Alizarin Permanent, Napthol, and Quinacridone and unlike with other colors, I use all six consistently, with the exception of Cad Red Med. I personally prefer the softer quality of Napthol.

As a beginner painter Alizarin, Quinacridone, and Cad Red Med (or Napthol) are a must. Normally I recommend needing only a cool and warm primary, but red is a different story.

Remember when you are picking which red to paint with always consider the following characteristics: color temperature, tinting strength, and opacity.  Of the three mentioned above Alizarin and Quinacridone allow for cool transparencies, while Cad Red Med provides a strong warm, opaque red.

For more about colors and their pigment characteristics take a look at my Tips and Techniques page.

Characteristics of an Oil Paint: A Guideline to Purchasing the Perfect Paint Every Time

To read my updated version of this post, follow the link below (and I hope you are having a great day!): 

https://www.katherinegriffinstudio.com/post/oil-paint-colors-how-to-mix-or-purchase-the-perfect-paint-color-every-time


Walking into a store and looking at their rows upon rows of oil colors can be either very exciting (if you are like me and want them all) or very overwhelming (if you are also like me and you just want a red that will do what you want it to do but you don't know which one will do that).

When I need to purchase a new color, say red, it is usually not because I want a "new" red color (I always want all the colors), it is because I need a different "acting" red that will do something different from the reds that I already have. There are three general paint characteristics that will help you to find that "right" color: Color Temperature, Tinting Strength, and Opacity.

Color Temperature 

I talk a lot about color temperature. Color temperature, even for abstract painting, is important as it can help you create better color harmony throughout a work as well as create correct lights and shadows (yes, even abstracts have lights and shadows).

Orange is the warmest color on the color wheel, and blue is the coolest. As you move towards orange you get warmer colors; as you move towards blue you get cooler colors. So within each color family you'll have a variety of warm and cool colors. Take the simplified example below, of the green family:

Let's say I own the green on the top row, a solid Kelly green. I am painting a warm green shadow on a plant, and as I am painting I realize that this green isn't working. Why? Color temperature. The Kelly green is a cool color, and what I really need is a warm green from the second row. Knowing this I can go to my paint store and pick the right colored green.

But why can't I just mix the right green? You potentially could, but there is a season for mixing and sometimes a season for purchasing. After all, just having the right color doesn't mean you have the right paint.

Tinting Strength 

Tinting Strength refers to how strongly one color will affect another. Take Phalo Blue, for example. It has a very strong, or high tinting, strength. One drop will dye the entire room blue. Cerulean blue, on the other hand, has a very muted tint and is wonderful when you need just a nice subtle blue tinge.

Be careful not to assume that opacity and tinting strength are the same thing. In the case above, the high tinting Phalo Blue is transparent while the low tinting Cerulean is opaque. On the flip side, Titanium White is an opaque white will take over anything that you mix with it, while Zinc White is a transparent white with an extremely low tinting strength (which makes it perfect for delicate veil and lace details).

Opacity 

There are three levels of opacity: opaque, semi-transparent, and transparent. Opaque paints advance towards the viewer with a thick, buttery consistency. Transparent paints recede away from the viewer with a thin, glossy consistency.

How to Pick the Right Paint You Want and Need 

Going back to my first color, red. If I am a beginning artist with a limited color palette, I most likely only have Alizarin red (this was me when I first started painting). Let's say I am painting a warm red apple. Alizarin is a cool, transparent red with a muted tint. That's great for my apple's shadows, but what about the rest of it? I could warm my red with a warm yellow, but then I would have to use a huge amount of my low tinting Alizarin to get a deep red, and even then it still would not be the real red that I want.

What I need is an opaque red so that it will advance, a high tinting red so that I can add yellow without my red getting overpowered, and a warm red to balance my cool Alizarin shadows. But which red has these qualities?

My Pigment Posts 

The answer to our red question can be found in my color pigment posts. I have already written a few pigment posts (White, Black, Yellow, and Orange) and as I was working on Red I realized that maybe why I was writing these posts wasn't entirely clear. Hence this guideline to tell you why the information in the color posts is useful.

My color pigment posts do not cover all the reds (or all of the greens, etc) made by all of the paint companies. Instead I have picked the top, most common colors which can be purchased from just about any paint company. They are the ones you will want in your collection before moving on to other colors.

When you need to purchase a new color, I would recommend taking a look at these color posts to see if the color you need is among the ones mentioned. Most likely it will be.

If you want to learn more about all of the colors, not just the ones I cover, I recommend checking out the Gamblin and Grumbacher sites.

If you have more questions about how to use oil paints, take a look at my main Tip and Techniques page.

Orange Oil Paint: Pigments, Basics, and How to Pick the Right Orange

Orange, the color of life vests and crossing guards, autumn and amusement, Buddhism and Hinduism, was not always such a “safe” color. Historically produced through extremely toxic means, it wasn’t until the 1880s, when synthetic oranges were produced from Cadmium Yellow, that a stable, almost non-toxic orange was available to artists.

Orange is one of the youngest true pigments; even its name is relatively new. Oddly the color orange, at least in the West, didn’t have a name until the late 15^th century when orange trees were brought from China. Before it was referred to as yellow-red. I had always erroneously assumed that the orange tree was named for the color and not the other way around.

Top Characteristic: Unlike yellow and red, orange becomes brighter instead of darker when deepened by its neighbor, red. 

Orange is the warmest color on the color wheel and tends to advance towards the viewer, though less than yellow.    

Cadmium Orange: Made from Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Orange is a warm, opaque orange with a naturally muted tint. 

The first true orange pigment as it is considered to be the pure hue of Orange. It was a happy replacement to minium, orpiment (arsenic), and Realgar, all extremely toxic or poisonous orange pigments used throughout the Middle Ages and Ancient China into the 1800s.

As a pure hue of orange, Cadmium Orange is also the warmest color on the color wheel.

Azo Orange, like Azo Yellow, is a non-toxic, cheaper, and equally lightfast option to Cadmium Orange.

Transparent Orange: Made from the dark yellow pigment diarylide, Transparent Orange is a warm, transparent orange with a strong red undertone that creates a muted but bright tint.

Transparent Orange is a rich, complex orange that creates variation in color temperature by being warm right out of the tube, but when mixed with white it pushes the paint into the cooler range. Transparent Orange allows for delicate glazes, blends, and mixtures.

Indian Yellow: Now made synthetically, Indian Yellow is a warm, transparent, deep yellow-orange with naturally sunlit tints. 

Used by the ancient Far East and throughout Europe during the 15th and 18th century, how the pigment was made was unknown until an investigation in 1883. Made in rural India (hence Indian Yellow) by force feeding cows mango leaves and little to no water. The cow's urine was collected into dirt balls and sold as a "pigment." After being banned in various countries the paint is now synthetically made.  

I included Indian Yellow as a part of my oranges because it is such a deep yellow-orange. I like to use it in place of Cadmium Orange when I need a transparent orange. 

How to Pick the Right Orange 

All of that being said, most artists of the past would mix their own oranges. It hasn't been until the past handful of decades that colorfast oranges have become available and are now more widely used. Having a tube orange can help create consistency throughout multi-day painting sessions, but this is also easy to achieve by mixing.

So while I do have both Cadmium Orange and Indian Yellow, these are colors that you can hold off on purchasing, unless you are a heavy orange user or you need a transparent orange. Transparency is also most impossibly to maintain through mixing.

Orange used throughout Art History: Below are some very orange paintings in the following order - Lord Leighton, Van Gogh, Fragonard, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rossetti.

For more about painting check out my main Tips and Techniques page.