Dark scarlets. These are sometimes considered earth reds because of their muted hue, but they aren’t granulating.
Color List
- Perylene Scarlet (PR149)
- Deep Scarlet (PR175)
- Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet/Brown Madder (PR206)
- Imidazolone Brown (PBr25)
- Perylene Maroon (PR179)
- Naphthamide Maroon (PR171)
- Perylene Violet (PV29)
My thoughts
Necessary slot? You can get along without a maroon, and I certainly have because I don’t really love most of the options; but I must grudgingly accept that it is a useful slot because I do tend to find myself wishing I had one.
The main reason is that this is the best type of color for muting blues, especially cyan. (And one usually has a cyan in the palette.) Yeah, you can use an earth red if you want your mixes to be granulating (and usually limited in value). Maybe you can use a bright orange or scarlet or middle red, depending on the exact colors you have in your palette. But I find that blues muted with maroon make quite lovely soft grays that are more difficult to get with bright complements.
Maroons can also deepen reds in a very nice way; mix maroon with rose/magenta to get an Alizarin Crimson hue.
Mix your own: I find this fairly difficult to mix nicely but I think the best general formula is Middle Red + a bit of some kind of complementary blue or green. My favorite is Perylene Red (PR178) + DS Indanthrone Blue (PB60).
See Also
- Mix Your Own Perylene Violet Lookalike
- What’s the difference between Deep Scarlet and Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet?
- What’s the difference between Naphthamide Maroon and Perylene Violet?
Similar Slots
- Scarlet
- Middle Red
- Crimson
- Earth Red
- Brown
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