Mixing recipe
How to mix violet
Target
#7B5AA6
Recipe mixes to #7A599F
A clean violet needs a violet pigment: nothing in a common 10-tube box gets within good range, because Ultramarine and Alizarin grey off in white. This recipe is white with a part each of Quinacridone Magenta and Dioxazine Purple. Two strong, transparent pigments, and the white does most of the volume.
The recipe
This one reaches outside the common 10-tube starter box. The paints above are from Masstone’s full pigment library.
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 2 parts Titanium Whitepile #F6F6F4
- Add 1 part Quinacridone Magentapile #D874B3Strong tinter. Add it in knife-tip doses and mix fully before adding more.
- Add 1 part Dioxazine Purplepile #7A599FStrong tinter. Add it in knife-tip doses and mix fully before adding more.
A simpler mix
Dioxazine Purple in white alone, seven to five, is the two-tube route. It is a point and a half further off and leans blue; the magenta is what makes the three-paint mix read as violet rather than purple. Use the two-tube version for violet in shadow.
What goes wrong
Both pigments are strong tinters, so a part each in two of white is a lot, and the order matters: magenta first turns the white pink, then the Dioxazine takes it to violet in a very small amount. Add the Dioxazine a knife-tip at a time; a half part too much turns violet to a dark purple with no light in it. Quinacridone Magenta (flagged by the mixing guide as moving a pile hard for its share) and Dioxazine Purple (tinting strength 5, where a cadmium is 1) are the paints to be careful with here: they go 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.