Content

• To step
• Method 1 of 2: Create pink with oil or acrylic paint
• Tips

A color palette is never complete without pink. Although you can of course buy ready-to-use pink paint, you can also easily mix it yourself. Moreover, you can then create exactly the shade you want, whatever you want to use the color for. To start with, take some nice shades of red, then add some white, or dilute the colors with water, and you will see that you can create a lot of beautiful shades of pink.

To step

Method 1 of 2: Create pink with oil or acrylic paint

1. Choose a color red. To make a shade of pink you can use most standard shades of red. Each shade of red will yield a different shade of pink, so you can experiment until you find one you really like. Most of the popular shades of red have similar properties, so choose one that suits what you want.
   • Shades of pink based on red with cadmium pigment (light, medium and deep red) yield a little orangish pink.
   • Scarlet-based pink turns beautifully bright.
   • Alizarin or dark red produces beautiful shades of pink with usually some hints of blue or purple in it.
   • So-called madder red is a translucent shade that you can use to create paler shades of pink.
   • Naphthol red also produces translucent shades of pink that are usually quite bright too.
   • Quinacridone is a good shade to mix with different blues or grays to achieve shades of pink. If you only mix it with white, it will yield a very bright shade of pink.
   • You can also use reddish earth tones (including Indian red and Venetian red) to create more natural shades of pink.
2. Choose a color white. To create shades of pink with acrylic and oil paint, as well as with other opaque types of paint, mix the shade of red you have chosen with a shade of white. However, not all colors of white are the same. For best results, if you want to mix colors to make pink, choose an opaque shade of white (such as titanium white). Transparent types of white (such as zinc white) sometimes only lighten the red, without actually producing pink.
3. Choose a base color. There are several ready-to-use watercolor paints that you can use to achieve beautiful shades of pink. You can adjust these colors more or less to your taste, simply by diluting them with a little water. Choose a base color like:
   • Permanently pink
   • Quinacridone
   • Ruby red
4. Mix the pink with red to deepen the color. If your base color is not as rich as you would like, choose a deeper shade of red. On your palette or in a container, mix this color with some of the rose-red and then dilute it until the color has the intensity you want.

Tips

• In general, you can use the same ways of mixing acrylic or oil colors if you want to create a color to paint your home with.
• If you need a lot of pink paint, for example for your house, it is often better to order the color from a professional mixer. It can be very difficult to recreate the exact same color yourself if you run out of paint before you are done.
• With some color combinations you can create a pinkish hue without using white. For example, if you mix quinacridone and light yellow, you get a kind of salmon pink. Experiment to see if you can create the shade of pink you want.