Surprising colour mix for painting soft pink roses

Are you having trouble with your delicate rose mixes? This should help…

The reason I called this mix “surprising” is that it is not the most obvious choice for a pink rose mix. In order to get the softness of a garden rose, the colour I add to my pure bright pink pigment is… green. This has a double effect: it makes the pink slightly more blue biased and at the same time it also makes it a bit more neutral. You keep a soft pink without the harsh hues of a Permanent Rose.

My favourite mix is Permanent Rose + Viridian. Viridian is a blueish, transparent and single pigment green that is very pure and clean. It modifies the pink without turning it muddy.

Another good mix is Quinacridone Lilac + Viridian. This is for roses that have a more magenta hue to them. The result is slightly more violet-biased than the mix above.

Here is a video in which you can see me mixing these colours, comparing them to the real petals and explaining why this works. I also posted a downloadable PDF tutorial to go with the video showing 16 different combinations of these mixes, on my Patreon site for my Patreon subscribers (Please click here for link to open in new tab)