Mixing guide
Purple is red plus blue, but most red plus blue mixes go muddy. The trick is pigment bias: both tubes need to lean toward each other (a blue-leaning red plus a red-leaning blue) or the mix collects all three primaries and slides toward brown. Below are the working purples and how to push them lighter or deeper without dulling them.
Quinacridone Magenta and Ultramarine Blue is the classic clean pair. Both already share a violet bias, so they meet at purple instead of through grey.
The cleanest mixable purple from two artist tubes.
Slightly cooler, more transparent. Great for glazes.
Adding white turns purple toward lavender quickly. Watch the temperature shift, white drags violets toward grey-blue.
Push purple darker with its complement (a yellow-green) or with a transparent earth. Black flattens violets faster than any other family.
A chromatic dark. Lifts to a warm shadow with a touch of white.
Cadmium Red plus Ultramarine Blue is the most common failed purple. Cadmium Red leans orange (it secretly contains yellow), so the mix collects all three primaries and goes muddy. Swap Cadmium Red for Quinacridone Magenta, Quinacridone Rose or Alizarin Crimson, all of which lean blue, and the purple cleans up immediately. The same rule cuts the other way: a green-shade blue like Phthalo Blue or Cerulean kills clean purple. Use Ultramarine Blue (which leans violet) instead.
Try it on your tubes
Pick the red and blue you own, paste your target hex, and Chromilla returns the ratio calibrated for your tubes.
Open Chromilla →