Each Sunday this summer I am looking at my paint “collection”:
Tools: Watercolors, 1, Yellow-Orange;
Tools: Watercolors, 2, Red-Pink
Tools: Watercolors, 3, Greens to Yellows
Tools: Watercolors, 4, Blues to Greens

I hated pink and purple as a girl; I was a tomboy.
I wanted a purple bike as a kid for about five seconds, but, well, tomboy…
Purpley-pink was just so GURLIE!  I’ve never navigated to purple, don’t remember ever buying but maybe one purple piece of clothing. As hit my teens, of course, I found out how amazing a tan blonde girl looks in soft pink, and so I liked it for clothing…
and later hot pink or magenta as an adult: it was shocking, sexy, and intense.

Violet?  Purple?

Maybe I never liked purple / magenta because I like truth and on some level
I intuited that purple was a trick of the eye!  (Just kidding.)  Unlike violet, which exists in the light spectrum as red moved to blue, purple isn’t real in the color spectrum of light photons.  Our brains make it up!  In terms of what the colors suggest in our world —
when you say purple it is the color closer to red, between crimson and violet.
Violet is closer to blue, and is usually less saturated than purple.

On the other hand, I need purples to paint with occasionally —
and am having a hard time finding one I love,
coming to watercolors from acrylics, where the colors are intense.

NOTE: All paints Daniel Smith (DS) unless it says
otherwise — including the Primatek colors.

Included in this posting are magenta-purpley pinks, as opposed to
the peachy pinks from the posting on Red.  Some were painted first in the Reds palette.

First, let’s talk colors that look the same,
have the same pigment structure,
or are called by the same name out of the way:

Greenleaf & Blueberry Caput Mortem is not the Caput Mortem I want (which is DS Caput Mortem, much less purple, and also discontinued, far right.) I am bringing together all the Caput Mortems, even though I put the DS version into the brown posting because it really has no tinge of purple.  Windsor Newton Caput Mortem, PR101, is an intense mauve that I really hate…. but I had to try it to see if it would take the place of DS.

BTW, if anyone has Daniel Smith Caput Mortem
I’d be eternally grateful and happily pay for it!

To see references on VIOLET and MAGENTA from handprint, click through.

The Keepers:

DIOXAZINE

CARBAZOLE VIOLET

IMPERIAL PURPLE

Which are keepers?  In the purple ranges, I will keep
Sennelier Dioxazine Purple 917 PAN, PV25 — though I will move to the tube version — and Carbazole Violet, Dioxazine, PV23(RS).  Both are dioxazines…
I love Imperial Purple, Quinacridone + Ultramarine, PV19 / PB29, but it has its limitations because it separates into lovely pinks and purpley-blues.
Still, I’m not a realist, and so, I am keeping it because it is beautiful.
Cobalt Violet Deep, PV14, I am keeping only because I need the hue, but I will keep looking for a deeper color, because it is sort of wishy-washy.

I am disappointed in some of the quinacridone magentas, and I have a half-dozen!
I will keep these, because they are clear and bright: QoR Quinacridone Magenta, PR122 (more lightfast that Opera pink and just as brilliant.)   Quinacridone Pink, PV42, is more pink than shown on my screen.  Yarka’s Quinacridone Rose is a bit muddy, but for now, I’m using it a lot so I will keep it until I find a better version.

Greenleaf & Blueberry Caput Mortem is such fun to use sometimes
in purpley stonework.  Perylene Maroon, PR179 is SO not a favorite color of mine,
but it fills the need in some mixes, and so it stays.

The Rarely or Never Agains:

To me, these really are losers.  I just don’t like them, and ought to trade them with someone NOW.  Why?  Ultramarine Violet, PV15 is Blah, wishy-washy, flat.  Quinacridone Violet, PV19, flat. Yarka Madder Lake is muddy and should pop.
Windsor Newton Caput Mortem, PR101, ugly.

Primatek Amethyst, unfortunately, while a responsive solid Primatek,
probably loses out because it is expensive and I am not a purple gurl!
I don’t think I’ve ever used it!  Tomboy still?

Pentalic Field Journal, Platinum Carbon pen, and Greenleaf & Blueberry,
Sennelier, Holbein, QoR, M.Graham and Daniel Smith watercolors.

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