I usually consider my Thalo Red Rose by Grumbacher, or my Permanent Rose 502 by W & N to be my “Magenta”. Both are PV19.

The reason I chose PV19 rather than some of those paints actually named, “Magenta” is that the PV19 plots very close to the outer ring of the color wheel. Some of those “Magenta” paints may be closer in hue to plotting on the correct “spoke” of the color wheel, but only at the expense of chroma. They are a bit grayer (dirtier). This makes my choice of PV19 as a primary color seem more logical. To be a true primary color, it not only needs to plot at a given hue on the color wheel (spoke), but also at (or near) the outer ring of the wheel.

I’m not sure what the Quinacridone Red PV19 may exhibit in terms of its actual hue, but I’m sure it works very well for your use! I believe that it is transparent, as well, making it a very versatile color for mixing.

It is interesting to note that I use Quinacridone Red by M. Graham, but its pigment ID is PR209 ! It exhibits a greater Yellow contribution than PV19. It’s a very useful color, too, especially for transitions between Magenta, and Red.

You are correct regarding the use of two transparent colors for mixing.

I’ve found that W & N’s Transparent Yellow 653 (PY128) serves as a very useful transparent Yellow. The only other one I’ve found is Rembrandt’s Transparent Yellow, and it, too, is PY128.

30 years ago I did paint exclusively with PW6, PV19, PY3, and and a pthalo-blue (the latter nearly destroyed everything) … which worked fair for Maimi beach scenes.

I did the same choice in acrylic underpainting for oils. To give an Acrylic Wings to my poor sink-in oils. That gives second life to my oil painting to prevent future cracks, yellowing, delamination and gave me the wide road to paint with layers on flexible canvases without having troubles. However, quality acrylic films dries quickly and therefore, limited palette is a number one of choice. CMYK is unbeatable color scheme for acrylics. So, I took PW6, PY3; PV19; PB15:3 to build CMY. To eliminate million troubles with such colors I also added Raw Sienna; Venetian Red; Mid Green to my acrylic collection. As for Black, it is most useful color for me, but I like self-made Vine Black. Vine Black powder + Acrylic gloss varnish gives gorgeous Black acrylic paint! Oil painting with acrylic support and acrylic drying engine inside isn’t a best practice for modern oil painting technique? What Tad Spurgeon really tried to get with his experiments? He want to invent oil painting medium with the properties of acrylic medium. Non-yellowish, fastest drying and flexible drying oil. I just replaced “hand refined organic flax seed oil” to “acrylic medium” and got what he love so much!

Thanks for sharing that Gigalot. Doubtless the scheme is ‘cleaner’ with acrylic underpaintings and for the excellent reasons you suggested. I sort of mixed everything to make a black, myself, but things looked like a CMY printer (without the black).

Utmost blessings!
Philip

To mix Black with 3 primaries you must have all those primaries in excellent transparency. But to paint normally, transparent paints are less useful than opaque paints. Therefore, you must have each color in two version, in transparent (to mix black) and in opacity (for comfortable creativity). Such palette will be much expensive for me because I still do not have a reason to switch oil to acrylic. Also, acrylic is supersonic drier. To mix Black you need some time, but I do not have it. Paint dries with the speed of F-104 landing

BTW, Doc, If I do some “CMYK” color mistakes in Acrylic underlayer, I can try to correct then later in oil upperlayer using full collection of oil paints. Just do not crash color wheel too much!

Gigalot mentioned mixing three transparent primaries to mix black. You can also mix black from a transparent green – Phthalo Green Blue Shade – and a red. Sorry, forget which red, it might be Cadmium Red Light, but of course that is an opaque red. Perhaps someone who mixes a black using green and red like this can step in and clarify which red to use.

Any red will work but the darker, more transparent ones will give the darkest blacks. The redder (less purplish) forms of PV19 are a popular, good choice. Any dark crimson or dark maroon will probably work at least as well, maybe better. If you need the black to be more or less perfectly neutral, you’ll have to choose/tweak your pairings with a fair degree of specificity, but for my purposes (usually thick applications), these PG7 + red mixes are more than black enough.

P.S. for color mixing – especially for rich, dark mixes, having a highly transparent yellow (something like Indian Yellow, Nickel Azo Yellow, Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide) can be incredibly useful, allowing mixes that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.