A dark, muting color somewhere between maroon and purple. Botanical artists use it for deep floral shadows. With its leafy counterpart, Perylene Green, it mixes up a dark black.
Experiment Results
Hue: Deep muted wine color.
Gradient: Slightly streaky gradient. Not granulating exactly, but there is a texture in midtone; white flecks from the paper show up.
Opacity: Transparent (but dark)
Glazing: Glazes to a deep brown-maroon.
Drying Shift: I noticed a very strong drying shift. The color looked both darker and brighter when wet.
Comparison to Other Brands
Winsor & Newton – Perylene Violet
The exact same pigment number and color name is available from Winsor & Newton, and the color looks and behaves very similarly. I found that I didn’t get quite as much midtone from this color – it graded pretty quickly from mass to a light tone. It also seemed to have slightly less texture, though both are considered nongranulating. WN’s appeared slightly more bluey-purple (compared to DS’s slightly more muted/brownish shade), but I thought the mixes were brighter with DS’s.
Comparison to Other Colors
Carbazole/Dioxazine Violet (PV23)
Warmer, more muted. A maroon rather than a bluey purple. Both get very dark.
Perylene Maroon (PR179)
Cooler and purpler; less red. Perylene Maroon borders on an earth orange.
Lunar Red Rock/Indian Red (PR101)
Purpler, less brown, and less opaque, and less granulating. Similar range of values. Both could be considered in the maroon brown family.
Naphthamide Maroon (PR171)
Definitely the most similar mix. Napthamide Maroon is just slightly warmer. They mix similarly.
Color Mixes
Rich Green Gold (PY129)
Non-favorite muted violets/golds.
Imidazolone Yellow (PY154)
Brown!
Hansa Yellow Deep (PY65)
Benzimida Orange (PO62)
Transparent Pyrrol Orange (PO71)
Dark orange-browns.
Deep Scarlet
Brownish crimson or muted dusty pinks. I don’t love these mixes.
Purple Magenta
Perylene Violet is a contender for a “dark magenta”. It looks much darker than a primary magenta, but in the same color family. With that said, it doesn’t tend to play nicely with Quin Magenta wet-in-wet, preferring to push this pigment away, and dries much more muted than it looks wet.
Indanthrone Blue
The mixes with blues are much more satisfactory than the mixes with warm colors. Moody dark violet blues.
Phthalo Turquoise
Dark, muted gray-purples. Mutes blue.
Cerulean
More blue-purple-grays, but these have interesting flecks of bright blue granulation. I like these mixes for cloudy skies. Denise Soden demonstrates this pairing in her video on Perylene Violet: “This combination creates purplish grays, dusty blues, and muted sky pairings. I think this would be a really stunning pairing for soft landscapes.”
Phthalo Green
Striking black with Phthalo Green.
Perylene Green (PBk31)
A mix that makes a super-dark, velvety black.
What Others Say
The masstone color is a very dark and intense scarlet, which shifts toward a dull red violet in tints. The paint makes an interesting shadow accent color for portraits and figures, but used lightly: it has a purplish brown color when dried that looks dull in heavy concentrations. It has a significant drying shift, losing lightness and chroma by about 30%. For most painting situations I would prefer the more versatile perylene maroon (PR179). Both paints mix very dark, warm near neutrals with perylene black (PBk31).
Bruce MacEvoy, handprint.com
Perylene Violet is the most versatile paint in my palette. I do not understand how watercolourists can live without it. It might even be difficult to find one of my paintings in which I haven’t used it. I can hear the chuckles of those amongst you who have been to my classes and who know that I use it in almost everything.
Sandrine Maugy
While its cousin Perylene Maroon excels at mixing flesh tones and muted secondaries, I think Perylene Violet really shines at mixing dark, moody greens, purples, blues, and teals… [Roman Szmal’s] is a beautifully saturated version, and much more vibrant than the other [Daniel Smith and Schmincke] versions of this pigment.
Denise Soden, “Color Spotlight: Perylene Maroon”
My Review
I’m torn on this color. I like the idea of a violet neutral, but I find the mixes generally dingy. I feel like I usually really enjoy the color when I first paint it out, but the drying shift is killer: the paint always dries much lighter and duller than it goes down.
I do like the way it makes deep, luscious shadows for red objects like flowers and cherries.
I feel like I do see palette opportunities for a dark wine color:
- Deepener for all reds, from scarlet to rose to magenta. Alizarin Crimson and similar don’t tend to get dark enough to provide a real contrast.
- Botanical specialist paint for red and wine-colored flowers. Some flowers, like the day lily pictured below, just contain that color!
- Late winter/early spring seasonal colors: dried flower and branch husks, the shadows of deep piles of dry leaves, the deep purple-crimson of skunk cabbage flowers, the reddish branches of dogwood shrubs. It may be a dull color, but so is the winter landscape most of the time.
- Summer high-contrast shadow color, especially for red objects or to mix chromatic darks.
On my palette? No.
Favorite version: DS, I guess, of the ones I’ve painted out. Denise Soden successfully demonstrated that Roman Szmal’s is nicer, but I usually prefer tube paint.
Favorite alternative: Personally, I prefer the slight increase in warmth that comes with the very similar Naphthamide Maroon (PR171).