You can’t mix a true red: it’s a primary. What you can mix is every red, pink and purple in the library from two red tubes. Cadmium Red leans orange and makes scarlet, vermilion and tomato reds, salmon and coral. Quinacridone Magenta leans blue and makes crimson, raspberry, hot pink and clean violets. Which one you start from decides almost everything.
Why purple goes brown
Purple is red and blue, but most reds and blues make mud. Cadmium Red contains a lot of yellow, and yellow with a blue and a red is all three primaries: brown. For a clean purple, the red must lean blue (Quinacridone Magenta) and the blue must lean red (Ultramarine Blue).
- More magenta: orchid, plum and grape. More blue: violet and royal purple.
- Lavender and lilac: the purple in a lot of white. Lilac leans pink, lavender leans blue.
- Mauve and heather: lilac dulled with a trace of yellow, its complement.
- Aubergine and dark purple: deepen with more blue and a touch of green, not black.
Darker reds without mud
Don’t add black: it turns red brown and dead. Darken with a little blue or green, red’s complement. For wine and burgundy start from the cool red; for brick and barn red, from the warm one with a touch of blue.
Pinks: red into white
White turns red pink, not light red, because white cools as it lightens. A cool red gives clean, bright pinks like hot pink, fuchsia and bubblegum; a warm red gives salmon, coral and peachy pinks. For a lighter red that still reads as red, lighten with yellow or orange first and only then a little white.
- Baby and pastel pinks: a very small amount of red in a lot of white (Baby Pink is 24 parts white to 1 Cadmium Red).
- Salmon and coral: warm red, a touch of yellow to put back the warmth white takes out, then white.
- Dusty pink and old rose: pink knocked back with a trace of blue, its complement.
- Magenta and raspberry: the cool red almost straight, deepened with a touch of blue.