Granulating earthy reds/maroons/pinks, often made from iron oxides.
Color List
Violet Iron Oxide (PR101) aka Caput Mortuum Violet
My thoughts
Necessary slot? No, but it’s a nice-to-have if you’re painting a lot of earthy subjects like rocks and mountains and dirt and canyons and whatnot. These colors tend to be quite granulating which can provide texture to warm subjects for which you cannot use Ultramarine Blue or other typical cool texturizers. When combined with Cerulean Blue or other cyans, they make warm, soft grays.
Cooler Indian Reds (such as DS’s) and violet oxides can be used effectively to make soft violet-gray shadows, such as in Claire Giordano’s Alpenglow palette.
A liability of the PR101 earth reds is that they are all opaque which limits their value range. They can also be obnoxiously powerful in masstone. In dilute, they have their own special charms; I’ve used diluted Venetian Red for a sunset cloud coral during my blue and brown studies, for example.
Potter’s Pink and Ultramarine Pink are miscellaneous (non-PR101) and quite weak, but with heavy granulation if you’re into that sort of thing.
My favorite: I like warmer WN Venetian Red. I also sometimes consider Terra Cotta as a cousin of Venetian Red, though it’s borderline and I listed it as an earth orange.
See Also
- Color Comparison: DV Indian Red vs. WN Venetian Red
- Limited Palette Study: Gold Ochre, Indian Red, Cobalt Turquoise
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