From the Paint Box

 Continuing on the theme of Red, this week's post is all about pigment properties and highlights some favorite "reds" from my paint box.

Red artist's colors come from either natural materials (like minerals and ores) or synthetically produced pigments made through organic chemistry.  They can be light or dark, warm or cool, transparent or opaque.   When used in paint, the binder for pigment can also affect the appearance of the reds and they can be a range of sheens from matte to gloss. 

For our purposes here, we are focusing on acrylic paint which has a binder that dries clear and glossy.  Red pigments that are naturally transparent will genereally appear glossy because you can "see through" the transparent pigments to the glossy binder.  Earth pigments are dense and more opaque so when they get mixed with the acrylic binder, those colors will end up with a more matte and opaque finish.

Below is a sampling of reds that I love.  On the top line you can see each red in its pure color.  The lines below that are recipes of each red when mixed with ratios of Soft Gel (Gloss) - working from 75% color: 25% gel down to 10% color: 90% gel.  This is to show you how you can extend reds to reduce their intensity and reveal their undertones.  These recipes work great with high-chroma colors like quinacridones as well as high-opacity colors like Red Oxide.

Reading left to right, the colors, their qualities and the reasons I love them are:

Cadmium Red Medium: warm, opaque red that mixes lovely earthy oxide-like violets when mixed with blues.

Quinacridone Red Light: bright, warm, transparent red that is excellent for glazes and color mixing

Quinacridone Magenta: intense, cool, transparent pinkish hue that is excellent as a red for color mixing and fabulous in glaze layers.

Quinacridone Crimson: dark, rich, transparent red.  I love it for mixing darker oranges and violets, it is higher tinting so you don't need much of it to make color recipes!

Permanent Maroon: dark, warm, wine-hued, transparent red that is a mixture color made from a recipe of Quin Burnt Orange, Quin Magenta, Pthalo Green (YS) and Transparent Red Iron Oxide

Napthol Red Medium: semi-opaque, cool, high-tinting red that is a great alterative to Cadmium Red Medium as it is non-toxic.  Lovely for underpaintings!

Pyrrole Red: warm, opaque , high-tinting red that is also a wonderful alternative to cadmium.  

Transparent Red Iron Oxide: transparent, warm, earthy brown-red that is great for layering & glazes and it is my favorite red for mixing flesh tones from and I have it in all of the paints - acrylic, oil, and watercolor!

Red Oxide: Opaque, matte finish, earthy brown-red.  I love this red for rust effects!

Due to these varying properties of reds, when mixed with yellow and blue to make secondary colors, you may not end up getting what you would expect.  The reality of color is that red and blue don't always make a "purple" but you may get some exciting new color combos from your color mixing experiments that you will end up falling in love with!

Top to bottom, the reds used for the mixtures above are Quinacridone Crimson, Quinacridone Magenta, and Transparent Red Iron Oxide.  Each is mixed with Hansa Yellow Medium and Manganese Blue Hue.  Notice that while it's a "red", Transparent Red Iron Oxide leans towards a rust-orange hue and makes greens when mixed with blue!

Golden Paints has a great paint mixer tool on their website that will allow you to estimate these mixtures before purchasing colors, be sure to check it out HERE!

It is always good to make sample cards of your colors before applying them to your final images so that you know what to expect from them before committing them to your surfaces!

Here are a couple examples of how I like to use red in my creative projects:

Try pairing a deep crimson red and/or earthy red oxide with light blues and teals!

Use a bright red underpainting below opaque impasto color and allow it to show through in sections to make the image "pop"!