Color Spotlight: Pyrrol Red (PR254)

Pyrrol Red is a straight-ahead middle red, the platonic ideal of red! The color of fire engines, cardinals, and yew berries, it’s very bright and bold with a slight orange bias. Its closest complement is Phthalo Green Yellow Shade.

Pigment Stats

Pigment: PR254, a diketopyrrolo pyrrole (DPP) pigment
Series: 3
Lightfastness: I – Excellent
Transparency: Semi-Transparent
Staining: 3-Medium Staining
Granulation: Non-Granulating
Toxicity: Non-toxic

Experiment Results

Gradient: Just a gorgeous smooth gradient. It was easy to get bold color from this one. I wrote ‘nice handling!’ on the bottom because it was just such a joy.

Opacity: Less opaque than its cousin, Pyrrol Scarlet. There was a small, almost undetectable amount of pigment visible on black.

Glazing: Glazes to a nice deep barn red.

Colors Mixes: Great for mixing brights in the pink, orange, and earth tone family.

• Gorgeous bright Quin Gold-esque color with Pure Yellow (PY154)
• Struggled with Yellow Orange probably because it was a Schmincke paint and I always overdilute them, but it looks like you can at least get peachy tones
• Bold coral with Quin Rose
• Slightly muddy Alizarin Crimson-esque color with Quin Purple
• Shockingly gorgeous maroon with Ultramarine
• Gray-violet with Phthalo Blue Green Shade
• Gray-green with Phthalo Green Blue Shade
• Really pretty earth red/sienna with Burnt Sienna. Sort of between Transparent Red Oxide and Quin Burnt Sienna, but non-granulating. Really interesting.

Comparison to Other Colors

The most obvious comparison are to its name twins who I always mix up, Pyrrol Scarlet (more orangey, more opaque), and Pyrrol Crimson (less orangey, darker, more transparent).

Pyrrol Red is much more orange-biased than, say, Alizarin Crimson or Carmine, and because of that it makes distinctly different mixes (turn blues and greens into browns and grays, instead of purples and blues).

Compared to DS Quinacridone Coral (aka Quinacridone Red in most brands), Pyrrol Red is more a straight-ahead red; it dilutes to “light red” rather than coral-pink.

Comparison to Other Brands

Various Brands

I painted out various brands from a dot card from Oto Kano’s Patreon. Here’s Oto Kano’s comparison of these colors.

My quick impressions:

• Daniel Smith: The dullest of these!
• Holbein: Not as strong, but maybe this ok since it keeps it from going too dull
• Sennelier: A bit on the dull side
• Schmincke (color name: Scarlet Red): Bold, bright, matte. A nice one.
• Winsor Red: Slightly on the dull side
• Qor: Weird speckles
• Mission Gold: Very shiny in masstone
• Da Vinci Red: Shiny in masstone

I lated tried a few more of these and painted them out below.

Da Vinci – Da Vinci Red

I liked the strength and boldness of this version, but found it got shiny in masstone. (You can see it a little in the photo, in the top right of the swatch and of the magenta mix; it was photographed dry.)

Holbein – Pyrrole Red

This is the brightest one I tried! It lacks range but that means it resists that dull, bricky edge that this color can have. It looks pinker in dilute than some of the others. Makes bold scarlets (with oranges) and roses (with magentas). Bolder oranges with warm yellow than other versions, though still weird with a middle yellow. Slightly shiny in masstone.

Schmincke Horadam – Scarlet Red

I don’t know if I just painted it out too dilute or what, but it lost a lot of intensity in drying, and I got the signature Schmincke hard-edged lines in many of the mixes. The small drips appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

Mix Your Own Pyrrol Red Hue

Quin Rose + Transparent Orange

In Liz Steel’s class, I learned that Quinacridone Rose makes a lovely middle red when mixed with a Transparent Pyrrol Orange.

Scarlet + Crimson

The combination of scarlet and crimson can also make a strong middle red. For example, I used a combination of SH Geranium Red (PR242) plus HO Pyrrole Rubin (PR264) for a winter berry Nature Spot. I find that including at least one semi-opaque pyrrol color helps to give the mix a ‘weighty’ feeling similar to PR254 (transparent + transparent mixes, such as the Quin Rose + Transparent Orange referenced above, can be easy to overdilute).

Color Mixes

Gold Ochre (PY42)

Raw Sienna (PBr7)

Benzimidazolone Orange (PO62)

Quin Violet (PV19)

This is a great mix for crimson and bordeaux hues.

Indanthrone Blue (PB60)

Dark, moderately vivid violets.

Phthalo Blue Red Shade (PB15)

Mauves; they dried fairly light thanks to PBRS drying shift.

Phthalo Turquoise (PB16)

Indigo

Dark, very muted mauves, similar to Ron Ranson favorite Payne’s Gray + Alizarin Crimson. The red deepens the Indigo as well.

Phthalo Green

These are complementary and make a striking black. With more green, you can make dark green, though it always has a phthalo green undertone to it – I found it difficult to make an even perylene green hue.

What Others Say About Pyrrol Red

[Winsor Red’s] staining is so strong that it will stain not only the paper, but other colors in a mixed wash. If used in a glaze, it will stain the color underneath, reducing the brilliance of both colors. The color is most useful when extreme intensity is required, such as in background mixes, flowers and garments.

Watch out for: Winsor Red isn’t a good ingredient for deep, intense darks because it’s a little too opaque.

Zoltan Szabo, Zoltan Szabo’s Color-by-Color Guide to Watercolor, p.22: “Winsor Red” (1998)

A widely offered middle red that can is close to a scarlet hue… It is a plausible substitute for cadmium red paints in masstone, but lacks cadmium’s radiance in tints; it is a good mixing partner with synthetic organic yellows, but these mixtures seem less attractive to me than the equivalent mixture of cadmium red and yellow. Substitutions. A very good color match, with better transparency, can be mixed from quinacridone rose (PV19) and naphthol scarlet (PR188).

Bruce MacEvoy, handprint.com (2010)

Pyrrol red is semi-opaque, fire engine kind of red. I use it as the warm red on my palette, although it is considered a pretty middle-of-the-road kind of pigment. It doesn’t really lean too much one way or the other, and there certainly are oranger tones on the market. The reason I use it as my warm red is because I don’t use oranges very often, and I find it’s easy to just mix some yellow in with this color to get any type of orange that I might need, and it provides a little bit more mixing ability into the other tones that I would use a red for… I have found in my uses that there is quite a drying shift, especially in tints.

Denise Soden, Color Spotlight: Pyrrol Red

Pyrrol is a perfect, middle-of-the-road neutral red whose bluish tones are only evident when situated next to a warm color. It’s semi-transparent to semi-opaque but isn’t prone to muddiness, dilutes beautifully, and has a moderate flow rate with very little drying shift.

Tonya @ Scratchmade Journal, Watercolor Comparison: The Color Red

My Review of Pyrrol Red

I really enjoyed the process of swatching this one out. It has nice handling and grades gorgeously. I just love the brightness and the reddiness of this! It’s perfect for pops of really red red, such as winter cardinals and viburnum berries. It’s a nice base for bold, peak autumn leaves. I especially like its convenience in a field kit for outdoor painting.

I usually prefer warmer scarlets (which mix bold oranges) or bluer-toned magentas (which mix bold violets). This doesn’t really mix boldly on either side of the rainbow. The oranges are bolder than the violets, which are extremely dull, but the oranges also didn’t wow me. It’s especially underwhelming when mixed with a middle yellow: the color is kind of a weird dark peach rather than orange.

Surprisingly for such a bold color, my favorite mixes with Pyrrol Red were rather subtle: dull mauves with blues (though many mixes can do this); a touch of Pyrrol Red dropped into a bold blue to make a deep indigo; netural black with Phthalo Green.

For middle reds, I prefer Perylene Red (PR178), which looks a bit duller alone but mixes nicer, in my opinion. But Pyrrol Red is unbeatable if you want a bright, fire engine red.

Favorite version: Holbein – it’s the brightest, and lacks the dull bricky edge that some of them can have. I also like the pinks it makes in dilute.

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Holbein – Pyrrole Red, 5 ml tube: Jackson’s US