Daniel Smith Quinacridone Rose ( Pigment PV19 )
What Colors Make Royal Blue? What Two Colors Make Royal Blue (Updated 2023)
Are you trying to paint and want to know what two colors make royal blue?
In this article, you are going to learn about the concept of color mixing and how you can make the color royal blue.
What if you want to make variations of royal blue?
Keep reading to learn more…
As of now, you may be aware that blue has a lot of variations. Aside from finding out what colors can make royal blue, you can also mix this color with another and form a new shade.
Depending on the amount you use, the result will be different.
First, you need to understand color theory and color models.
Color Theory Basics
To better understand how to make a royal blue color, we need to study how colors operate. When looking at the entire spectrum of hues, we need a color wheel. This visual representation gives you an idea of how colors are related to one another.
For example, if you combine two different colors, you can make a new hue. When primary colors are mixed, you can come up with secondary and tertiary colors.
The color theory is simple, it is mixing colors and creating visually appealing combinations.
In the color wheel, you can see that colors alongside each other are somehow related. For example, red, yellow, and orange are considered warm colors. If you will look to the other side of the wheel there are blue, violet, and green which represent cool colors.
Complementary Colors
At this point, you already get the idea that color mixing can create new colors. However, there is also another theory called Complementary Colors, which cancels out another color when two colors are mixed.
The new color formed will either be grayscale, white, or black. This set of new colors is called neutral colors.
Neutral colors are also needed in the color wheel. This helps creates new light or dark colors. For instance, if you add white to red, pink can be formed. On the other hand, if you add black to red, you can get a maroon color.
Purple and the color wheel
To understand why it’s so difficult to mix a decent purple color we need to talk about color theory.
Don’t worry… I’ll try to make this as painless as possible !
To illustrate how color theory works we’re going to be using a color wheel. Color wheels are very useful tools to help us understand color mixing.
A color wheel is a circle of hues used by artists as a guide to color mixing. They also help you choose paints for the color design of a painting. All color wheels begin with the primary colors: yellow, red, and blue. From these three colors we mix the secondary colors: orange, purple, and green. Finally we mix the tertiary colors by combining adjacent primary and secondary colors. The color wheel provides us with a visual reference to color mixtures and pigment combinations.
The concept of color temperature can be easily seen on the color wheel below. Warm colors include yellows, oranges and reds. Cool colors are comprised of purples blues and greens.
This idea is quite intuitive… For example, blue is easily perceived as cool, and red as warm, etc.
The color appearance of your paints all have a temperature bias. A cool paint color will lean towards the cool side of the color wheel and vice versa.
For example Phthalo blue (GS) has a cool bias because it contains some green. But French Ultramarine has a warm color appearance because it contains some red.
The following color wheel uses two versions of each primary color, both a warm and a cool version.
The color wheel helps us identify the color bias of our hues. If you look carefully Phthalo blue (GS) is closer to green and further away from red. It is closer to a cool color, therefore this makes it a cool blue.
In a similar way, French Ultramarine is closer to red and further away from green. This makes French Ultramarine a warm red.
Complementary color mixing rule
Now that you are able to distinguish warm and cool hues, we need to talk about complementary color mixing.
A complementary color is any color located on the opposite side of the color wheel from your target color. Take another peak at the color wheel, you’ll see that the complementary color of purple is yellow.
The complementary mixing rule tells us that if you mix two complementary colors, they neutralize each other. A neutralized color is a desaturated color such as grey or black.
So in general, when you mix purple and yellow paints you get a neutral brown color which has been desaturated.
How to make a vivid purple watercolor mixture
OK… Now that you have a grasp of color temperature and complementary color mixing we can demonstrate how to create a nice saturated purple with your watercolors.
If you want to mix bright saturated purple you need to mix the two primary colors closest to purple. In this case, cool red (Quinacridone Rose) and warm blue (French Ultramarine).
So why does this combination of warm blue and cool red produce a nice saturated mix ?
Well, if you remember, the complement of purple is yellow.
So the more yellow you mix with purple the more dull and desaturated it becomes.
Cool red and warm yellow are the furthest away from yellow. Therefore by mixing these two colors together we keep any traces of the unwanted primary yellow out of our mixture.
Cool red + warm blue = saturated purple
To mix a very saturated purple you use those primary colors which are closest to purple, and furthest away from yellow on the color wheel, therefore avoiding purple’s complementary neutralizing color.
This principal holds true for all secondary colors. A bright saturated orange can be mixed using the hues closest to orange, (warm yellow+warm red). A vivid green can be obtained by mixing the hues closest to green, (cool yellow+cool blue). This is why it’s essential to include a good selection of warm and cool primary colors in your color palette. Six colors is enough to begin with:
If you want a good range of mixing possibilities and to be able to make bright saturated color you need to include at least these six options in your palette.
The secondary color purple
Color theory tells us that purple is a secondary color and to mix it we need to combine red and blue.
So much for the theory.
This standard formula is true to a certain extent, but artists mix paints, not colors.
Pigments are the real carriers of color in paints, and each paint produces its own unique color appearance, and mixing results.
As watercolor artists we need all kinds of purples. Dull purples produce beautiful rich shade and shadow areas while brilliant lively purple creates intensity and focus.
The key is understanding how to mix the right purple for the right occasion.
So what are the color combinations for mixing desaturated dark purples or bright vivid purples ?
Let’s take a look at what happens when you mix together different variations of warm and cool blues and reds.
As you can see the best results for mixing bright purples come from using cool red. But warm reds (because they are closer to yellow), will neutralize the mix. You will always get a dull color purple using a warm red. These colors are nice in their own way, and can add beautiful richness and dark values to your paintings (far better than just using pure black).
The brightest purples come from hues of reds and blues which are closest to purple. So this means warm blues and cool reds.
As you have probably figured out by now, what is often poorly understood is the concept of color temperature. In practice the results of mixing different red and blue pigments produces a wide range of beautiful purples. But the general strategy of red+blue does not always give us a pure saturated purple.
The colors I used for the above test chart are as follows:
- Cool red: Quinacridone Rose
- Warm red: Pyrrol Scarlet
- Cool blue: Phthalo Blue (GS)
- chevron-right Warm blue: French Ultramarine
A quick word of caution.
The color name on a paint doesn’t tell you want is in the paint recipe. Pigments are what produce the final rendered color.
It’s a good idea to get into the habit of learning or at least making note of the pigments contained in your different paints so you don’t get too many surprises when mixing !
What Color Do Purple and Blue Make When Mixing Paint?
Blue is a primary color and purple is a secondary color, and they mix together to create blue-purple , sometimes called blue-violet, which is a tertiary color. There are many shades of blue-purple, including well-known colors like violet, indigo, lavender, and periwinkle. Yet, blue-purple is the best name for a 50/50 mixture.
What are Tertiary Colors?
Tertiary colors are created when a primary color is mixed with a secondary color that’s beside it on the color wheel. There are six tertiary colors on the RYB color wheel: yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green, and yellow-green. As you can guess, each color is a 50/50 mix of the two colors in its name.
Types of Blue-Purple
There are many shades of blue-purple, some of which have much more blue in them than others. These different types of blue-purple are created by mixing in more blue or purple, using different types of blue and purple, or adding white or black into the mix.
For example, if you mix light blue with purple, you’ll get more of a lavender or periwinkle color. If you mix purple with navy, you’ll get a deeper, darker purple.
If you add extra blue or purple, you might get colors like mauve , indigo , lilac , or plum . They’re all types of blue-purple, but their mixes aren’t perfectly even.
How to Make Blue-Purple Lighter or Darker
If you have a perfect mixture of blue and purple, there are plenty of things you can do to create a more unique mix. Here are some tips for making your blue-purple lighter or darker.
Mixing Lighter Colors
Adding some white to the color will make it lighter, but it might require a lot of white to create a significant change. Using lighter versions of blue and purple to begin with can also create a brighter tint.
Mixing Darker Colors
Adding a touch of black can darken your blue-purple, although this mixture is usually dark to begin with. Only use black sparingly as it can quickly overpower the rest of the color. Adding in darker shades like navy blue can also alter the color and make it not as vibrant.
Does Blue-Purple Have a Meaning?
Blue-purple doesn’t have one clear meaning, but since it’s a perfect mix of blue and purple, it holds some meanings of both colors. Blue is known for being a color of trust, security, and loyalty while purple has meanings of mystery, royalty, and imagination.
Blue-purple might be a sign of dignity, devotion, and independence. It represents strong relationships and beliefs, but also a sense of excitement and wonder for the future. Many people see types of blue-purple as signs of creativity, peace, and magic.
A whimsical color like blue-purple is sure to intrigue others. So, while it might not be as well-known as purple or blue, it’s a great color to use in your designs. You can decide which meaning you want to shine through in your art.
Can You Mix Colors to Create Blue and Purple?
If you don’t have blue and purple paint, you can mix other colors to create them. Yet, since blue is a primary color, the mixture isn’t quite so obvious. To get blue, you’ll have to use subtractive color mixing through the CMYK color model, which is primarily used for ink. According to that color wheel, magenta and cyan will give you blue.
Being a secondary color, purple is much easier to mix. It’s made of 50% blue and 50% red. So, when you mix purple and blue together, it’s like creating purple with extra blue added to it.
What Color Do Purple and Blue Make When Mixing Lights?
When it comes to lights, blue and purple are not often mixed together, as the light color model (RGB) uses violet instead of purple. Magenta and blue make violet, which is a tertiary color.
Mixing the primary color blue with the tertiary color violet would give you a slightly blue-violet color. So, you could say that it’s the light equivalent of blue-purple.
Understanding Different Color Models
There are three different color models for color mixing: RYB, RGB, and CMYK. All three are used for different things, and some create different results when colors are mixed. Understanding these color models and the difference between additive and subtractive color mixing will help you see why blue and purple are rarely mixed in lighting.
RYB
RYB is the subtractive color model that most people are familiar with since it’s the one that we often learn in early art classes. This color wheel is used for mixing paint and other hands-on art mediums together. In the RYB color model, red, yellow, and blue are the primary colors. All other colors can be made by mixing those together.
RGB
RGB is the additive color model that’s used for mixing lights. In lights, the primary colors are red, green, and blue, rather than red, yellow, and blue. So, their mixtures are slightly different. For this color model, red and green make yellow, red and blue make magenta, and blue and green make cyan.
CMYK
The subtractive CMYK color model is used primarily for ink and printing. On this color wheel, the primary colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. All three colors mix together to make black. In the CMYK color model, cyan and magenta make blue, magenta and yellow make red, and cyan and yellow make green.
How Do Our Eyes Perceive Color?
When we look at an object, that item absorbs all the colors on the visible light spectrum, except the one that we perceive it as. For example, if you look at a red apple, it absorbs the blue and green colors, and then it reflects red. So, our eyes see the apple as red.
In our eyes, we have cones that sense colors. In particular, we have cones for red, green, and blue, which are the primary colors on the RGB color model. When different amounts of these colors are added together, we perceive mixtures of the colors.
The cones in your eyes detect wavelengths on the visible light spectrum. How we see color is all about the colors reflecting off an object and the frequency of the wavelengths that our eyes perceive.
We detect the colors, and then our brain has to process them in a certain way. So, every time you look at a colorful object, there’s a lot more going on than you realize. That’s why color mixing is so much different for lights than it is for paint or ink.
Violet vs. Purple
Purple
Hex: #800080
RGB: 128, 0, 128
CMYK: 0, 100, 0, 50
Violet
Hex: #8F00FF
RGB: 143, 0, 255
CMYK: 44, 100, 0, 0
The names purple and violet are often used interchangeably, but they’re actually two different colors. Purple is a mixture of 50% blue and 50% red, while violet contains a little more blue than red.
So the difference between the two is fairly noticeable when looking at the colors side by side. Technically, violet is the wavelength we see on the visible spectrum and the color used in the rainbow.
Designing with Blue and Purple
Blue and purple are both cool colors, and they work well together in designs. Blue-purple colors of all shades and tints can also be paired with them. Using colors that sit close to each other on the color wheel is a great way to make a pleasing design. So, colors like pink, turquoise, and green might go well with blue, purple, and blue-purple.
When designing a room, blue-purple goes well with neutral colors like gray, white, black, and tan. Too many colors in a house can be overwhelming, so it’s pleasing to see a touch of blue-purple color in an otherwise neutral space. For example, you could have a gray couch, but having blue-purple pillows, flowers, or paintings nearby could make it look more appealing.
If you’re designing a logo or ad, you might want to use contrasting colors, such as the colors on the opposite side of the color wheel. That way, the words or images in your design will stand out more. Some complementary colors to blue-purple are orange and yellow. However, using blue-purple with those colors only works for specific purposes since it can create a vibrant and somewhat chaotic look.
Blue-purple is a beautiful color that often goes by violet, lavender, or periwinkle. It’s a great color to use in elegant and peaceful designs. Keep its meanings in mind when using it for various art pieces or in graphic designs. Like blue and purple, it makes people feel relaxed and confident and might even spark their imagination.
