Mixing recipe
How to mix brick red
Target
#9E3B2E
Recipe mixes to #9B4537
Brick red is Cadmium Red taken down with earth. Burnt Umber darkens and dulls it, and a single part of Alizarin Crimson deepens the red so it reads as fired brick rather than a dirty cadmium. Three tubes from a common box.
The recipe
Step by step
Build the pile from the biggest, lightest component and work toward the strongest tinter. Check the pile against each swatch before moving on.
- Start with 9 parts Cadmium Redpile #E64333
- Work in 2 parts Burnt Umberpile #A24936
- Add 1 part Alizarin Crimsonpile #9B4537Strong tinter. Add it in knife-tip doses and mix fully before adding more.
A simpler mix
Cadmium Red and Burnt Umber alone, three to one, gets to a good match with two tubes. It is a little more orange and a touch lighter. Use it for brick in sunlight; the Alizarin version is the deeper, cooler red of brick in shade or when wet.
What goes wrong
The umber is opaque and the Alizarin transparent, so the pile goes from a dull orange-red to brick in the last step. Alizarin is strong and transparent, and a part too much turns the mix toward burgundy. If the red looks too brown, the fix is more Cadmium Red; adding Alizarin alone darkens without brightening. Alizarin Crimson (flagged by the mixing guide as moving a pile hard for its share) is the paint to be careful with here: it goes in last, a knife-tip at a time, and a little too much cannot be mixed back out.
Related colors
Results vary with brand, lighting and medium. Acrylic dries a touch darker than it looks wet. Treat this as a mixing aid, not a lab instrument: it tells you which tubes to reach for and roughly in what proportion. Fine-tune the last stretch by eye.