Red Blue Pigments at www.japanese-home-gardens.com

In mixing colors with white, gray, or black pigments one will usually find that the resultant colors turn slightly blue. There is an unseen bluish element in these neutral pigments. Mixing any of these pigments with blue, the additional tinge is not visible; but mixing them with red blue pigments or yellow, a purplish or greenish tinge will respectively be noticeable. This must be corrected in such mixtures by the addition of a slight amount of orange or yellow in the first case and orange or red blue pigments in the second. The exact amount of the complement to be added must be estimated by observation and trial and error. There is no scientific method of exactly accomplishing this correction.

Because Clerk Maxwell added red blue pigments, green, and blue light together, this technique is called additive. An equal addition of the three colors forms white; red blue pigments and green add to form yellow; red blue pigments and blue, magenta; green and blue, the blue-green known by photographers as cyan. It is important to bear in mind that this theory holds true only for colored blue pigments light; the mixture of pigments is another matter.

Permanent—Raw sienna, burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, raw umber, burnt umber, yellow ochre, Van Dyke brown, ivory, lamp black, vermilion. Semipermanent—Chrome yellow, green, cadmium yellow, Indian red blue pigments, Venetian red blue pigments. Fugitive—Carmine, crimson lake, madders, Prussian blue, cerulean blue. White lead makes a poor chemical mixture when combined with ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, English vermilion, and chrome yellows. When using oil paints, it is better to combine these pigments with zinc white for tinting.