Have You Painted With Dioxazine Purple?
Dioxazine purple is the purplest purple in the whole world. It positively drips with royal connotations, and it is one of the most mixable paint colors you could wish for.
Whether you are using Dioxazine Purple in acrylic painting, oil, or watercolor, you are in for a treat every time you twist that cap off.
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Here is a visual for Dioxazine purple, but I also want to show you what it looks like when mixed. Definitely give it a whirl if you haven’t already, and explore what this gorgeous color can do in your art.
What is it About Dioxazine Purple?
The history/origin of Dioxazine Purple is kinda interesting, if you’re a color nerd, as I am. The pigment comes from coal tar and I found differing accounts of who discovered it, so I won’t go down that rabbit hole…
If you would like some sciencey facts about Dioxazine Purple:
Its chemical formula is C34H22N4O2Cl2, and its chemical name is carbazole dioxazine, and it is also known as Dioxazine Violet. It’s super robust and stable in all environments, and as such is used widely in car paints!
Dioxazine Purple is considered a cool color, is transparent, but in its undiluted form looks nearly black. It’s lightfast, and mixes beautifully with SO MANY other colors, either to darken them or create an endless number of other colors when a little white is added.
Related: How to mix black with paint
Dioxazine Purple in Different Paint Types
Dioxazine Purple is available in nearly every color-based art material you can think of, but you will see different names for it. I’ll link some of the materials below.
Acrylic
You can find Dioxazine purple in all the acrylic paints from professional to basics to high flow acrylics. This is where I have used it, and fell in love with how deeply purple it was, but also how infinitely mixable!
Posts on acrylic paint to check out next:
Oil
If oil paint is your paint of choice, you will find Dioxazine purple in a few brands. When I looked up Gamblin Dioxazine purple oil paint on Blick, I found this information:
“PV23 produces slightly redder shades than PV37. Because the hue can vary with the conditions of preparation and grinding, it may be offered in red shade, blue shade, and so forth. Dioxazine Violet has good lightfastness. There may be some concern about it fading or shifting in color in tints and washes. Some artists have reported that PV37, a molecular variant, is more lightfast than PV23. Two molecular variants of Dioxazine Violet, PV23 and PV37, are available. They have similar properties, but mix slightly differently.”
Blick offers their own Dioxazine Purple in their studio oil paint, and here is the Holbein water-soluble Dioxazine Violet paint.
Watercolor
Dioxazine purple is widely available in watercolor paints from all the major manufacturers and is a non-granulating paint. It is named as Dioxazine Purple from Utrecht, M. Graham, and Sennelier, Look for words like violet or carbazole in the names names from other manufacturers.
Gouache
Dioxazine Purple Gouache paints: try M. Graham gouache tubes or Winsor & Newton Spectrum Violet.
Marker
If you’re looking for a paint marker, Liquitex offers Dioxazine purple in 2 sizes, and Winsor & Newton has a lovely Dioxazine Violet watercolor marker.
Spray paint
Yep, you can buy spray paint in Dioxazine purple. Liquitex has regular Dioxazine Purple and Dioxazine Purple #5. Try the Black Purple color in Montana Gold spray paint.
How to Use Dioxazine Purple
When painting with Dioxazine Purple, you have a ton of options. It plays nice with many colors, and you will absolutely want to track your color mixtures here, either using your own method or my color swatch sheets:
You can see Dioxazine purple mixed with Titanium white and a wee bit of Burnt Sienna in the two bottom mixtures in the left column, but also take a look at the top middle mixture!
Read next: How to find your perfect painting easel
