NEUTRALS FROM PURPLE
I mixed French Ultramarine and Quinacridone Magenta to create a mid-purple and then mixed this with two
yellows, Winsor and Cadmium. The blue in the purple mix produced some useful grey-greens with my green-
biased Winsor Yellow, whereas the orange-biased Cadmium Yellow was pushed towards brownish greys by the
reddish Quinacridone Magenta. Think of the possibilities if you repeat this with each slightly different purple.Winsor Yellow Mid-Purple Cadmium YellowI realisehowconfusingallthistalkofbiascan
bebuta lookatthecolourwheelshouldhelp.
It mayalsobehelpfultoconsiderthata primary
biasedtowardsa secondarydoesn’treallyneed
muchencouragementtobecomethatsecondaryand
sowillproducea purer,brighterversion.
Usingthatprinciple,andinthesamewaywemixedour
orangeslastmonth,a vibrantpurplewillbemixedfrom
theprimariesbiasedtowardseachother(apurple-biased
blue,FrenchUltramarine,anda purple-biasedred,
QuinacridoneMagenta)andif wemixtheprimariesbiased
awayfromeachother(agreen-biasedblue,PhthaloBlueEntrecasteaux, watercolour on Bockingford
425gsm NOT paper, 38x51cm
This painting was all about complementaries. I wouldn’t
usually use such a bright purple for the shadow areas,
but the complementary yellows sing out against them,
creating a really lively look to this Provence landscape.Top tip
Hues with a similar
bias can be swapped:
e.g. Cadmium Red for
Winsor Red, as both
are orangey reds
(Green Shade), and an orange-biased red, Winsor Red)
we will get a duller purple.
Again, it is important to remember that bright and dull
colours are of equal importance. A vibrant purple that may
be used for the fl ower of an iris is not a lot of good to us
if we are trying to achieve the purplish-grey of the clouds
in a stormy sky. In addition – and unlike the oranges –
the intermediate purples we get when mixing either
French Ultramarine with Winsor Red or Phthalo Blue
(Green Shade) with Quinacridone Magenta give us another
series of distinctly different purple mixesUNDERSTANDING YOUR PAINTS
If you decide to buy paints to practice recreating the
swatches in this article, always remember that a similarly-
named colour from different manufacturers is very unlikely
to be precisely the same hue or even to have the same
properties. Colour dot cards are an ideal way to compare
paint and to try many different colours without the
expense of purchasing full tubes or pans. Most
manufacturers produce these cards which have a small
but usable sample of every paint in their range.
You may also wonder why we need six colours in total
when printers can get away with only three (plus black)
and yet seem to be able to “mix” an almost infi nite variety
of hues. The reason is that they are used in different ways.
Printers print tiny dots of colour very close together and,
while some overlapping of the colour occurs, creating a
layering effect, there is no physical mixing of the inks and
the mixed colour is actually mostly created in our brains.
Because the colour dots remain almost a pure colour on
the paper, the optical mixes that are created are equally
pure. But even this isn’t perfect – the three colours
together theoretically should produce black but actually
result in a dark brown which is why a black ink is also
required when printing.
Physically mixing paints is an entirely different process.
The inherent impurity of the hues, as well as physical
changes that mixing brings, causes the resulting possible
colour range to be far from what printers can achieve.