“Purple is the diva of the color world—expensive, rare, and notoriously hard to get right.”
Why Purple is So Difficult
If you’ve ever tried mixing purple with paints, you probably discovered one of art’s great disappointments: instead of a radiant violet, you get a muddy maroon. The culprit? Pigments don’t play nice.
Swatch comparison:
In theory, purple is just red + blue. In practice, your reds and blues come with baggage—warm or cool undertones that swing the mix toward brown or gray (Matěják, 2022).
Warm reds (Cadmium, Vermilion): lean orange. Mix these with a warm blue like Ultramarine, and you get earthy violets, not glowing purple.
Cool reds (Alizarin, Quinacridone): lean toward pink. Pair these with cooler blues (Phthalo, Cobalt), and you’ll finally see purples with sparkle.
This is why purple is so elusive. Unlike green, which exists abundantly in nature, purple is rare both in pigments and in the visible spectrum.
A Brief History of Purple’s Rarity
Purple’s difficulty isn’t just a studio problem—it’s a cultural one.
In antiquity, the most famous purple was Tyrian Purple, extracted from the glands of sea snails along the Phoenician coast. It took thousands of snails to dye a single garment, which is why purple became synonymous with royalty and wealth (Janson & Janson, 1991). Roman emperors literally had laws reserving purple robes for themselves.
Painters, meanwhile, had almost no access to true purple pigments. Medieval manuscripts used ground lapis lazuli for blue, and cochineal or madder for red, but mixing them never yielded the glowing purples we expect today. The Renaissance saw attempts with mineral violets and plant dyes, but purple remained unstable, often fading to brown or gray.
It wasn’t until the 19th century that synthetic pigments (like Manganese Violet, and later the accidental discovery of Mauveine in 1856) made purple affordable. Even then, many painters preferred to mix their own violets from reds and blues, since premade purples were often chalky or weak.
“For centuries, purple wasn’t just a color—it was a statement of power.”
Mixing Blue + Red: Variations in Temperature
So how do we make purple pop today? It starts with understanding temperature.
Ultramarine (warm, leans violet) + Cadmium Red (warm, leans orange) = muted violet. Good for shadow tones, but won’t sing.
2. Cool Blue + Warm Red
Phthalo Blue (cool, leans green) + Cadmium Red = dull, brownish purple. Avoid unless you want mud.
3. Cool Blue + Cool Red
Phthalo Blue + Alizarin Crimson or Quinacridone Magenta = vibrant purple, bordering on electric. Excellent for flowers, fabrics, or highlights.
4. Warm Blue + Cool Red
Ultramarine + Quinacridone Magenta = rich, velvety purple. This is the “royal robe” mix—deep, dramatic, and full of atmosphere.
Making Purple Work in a Painting
Even with the right mix, purples can collapse if you don’t balance them. Here are a few tricks:
Lighten with White: Titanium White turns purple into lilac, lavender, or periwinkle. Great for skies or delicate flowers.
Darken with Black or Burnt Umber: Creates brooding violets for night scenes. Be careful—too much black mutes the color.
Glaze Over Yellow: A transparent purple glaze over yellow can create luminous depth, since the complementary contrast makes each hue vibrate.
Van Gogh used purple extensively in his shadows, often layering it against yellows to create intensity. Monet, too, frequently used violets in snow shadows—a trick that makes white appear luminous rather than flat.
“Monet’s snow isn’t white—it’s purple.”
Exercises to Train Your Eye
The Purple Grid: Make a chart with three reds (Cadmium, Alizarin, Quinacridone) and three blues (Ultramarine, Phthalo, Cobalt). Mix them all in pairs. Label and keep the swatch sheet—this becomes your purple library.
The Royal Contrast Test: Paint a small square of bright yellow, then surround it with different purples. Notice how complementary contrast makes both colors more vivid.
The Purple Shadow Study: Set up a white object under warm light. Instead of gray shadows, mix ultramarine + alizarin for a purple shadow. See how it makes the object glow.
Why Purple Still Matters
Purple isn’t just another color—it’s symbolic. In art history, it’s been associated with royalty, spirituality, and mystery. In modern painting, it remains a test of skill: can you mix a purple that sings instead of sulks?
The answer lies in your palette choices. Don’t expect magic from Cadmium Red and Phthalo Blue; they’ll betray you. Instead, lean into Quinacridone, Alizarin, and Ultramarine. Know your pigments’ biases, and your purples will go from muddy to majestic.
“To make purple pop, you don’t need more paint—you need smarter paint.”
References
Janson, H. W., & Janson, A. F. (1991). History of art (Vol. 1, 4th ed.). New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Matěják, J. (2022). Color mixing essentials: A contemporary beginner’s guide to color theory and color mixing. Mate Art.
