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I’m taking a look at how a pair of warm red acrylic paints, cadmium red and cadmium-free red light, mix with a few other common paint colours. All reds are considered warm, however some learn towards orange, which I consider warmer reds. Other lean towards blue, which I count as cooler reds. Both types of these cadmium reds are common on an artist’s palette, so I thought I’d do a quick comparison and see what differences I find.
Watch me mix cadmium red and cadmium-free red light with several other colours around the colour wheel on my Youtube channel.
I mixed the two warm reds, cadmium red and cadmium-free red light, with the following paint colours:
- Ultramarine blue
- Phthalo blue (green)
- Cadmium lemon
- Cadmium yellow medium hue
- Yellow ochre
- Titanium white
Thoughts
After looking at the resulting mixes from the two versions of cadmium red, I’m not finding one to clearly win out over the other. I think cadmium red has a slight edge because the pure paint is a beautiful, intense red, while the cadmium-free red light is a somewhat paler, more orange-leaning red. Both have beautiful mixes, that aren’t dramatically different. I’ll have to spend more time using both of them in paintings before I make a final decision on which will have a more permanent home on my palette.
A note on cadmium paint
Cadmium paint colours are well-loved by many artists for their opacity and colour intensity. Unfortunately cadmium is a toxic material. Many artists aren’t concerned with the levels found in acrylic paint, but others are. Some manufacturers have developed cadmium-free versions to cater towards artists looking to avoid true cadmium, including Liquitex which I used in the demo.
Learn more
Check out a listing of all my colour mixing blog posts and videos on my colour mixing roundup article.
Get your own
Pick up your favourite warm red acrylic paint at your local art supply store or on Amazon:
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