First you need to figure out what kind of color is lilac. If you ask people whose field of activity is far from working with color, you can get different answers. For example, some consider it a shade of red. Many people think that purple is purple. Perhaps this can be agreed. Purple really refers to shades of purple. However, unlike this color in its pure form, it is somewhat lighter and slightly warmer, has notes of pink. Purple color is considered more natural than purple - it painted flowers of violets and lilacs.
Origin of the word
Where does the word "purple" come from? This color designation is relatively new in Russian and has a rich and ambiguous history. The word came from the French language, where lilas means lilac and its color. But in French it came from the Arabs, where it denoted a completely different plant - indigo. Its flowers are indeed lilac, with a pinkish tint, but are much darker and blue.
Interestingly, the dye obtained from it has a dark blue hue. The beginning of this borrowing chain can be found in India, where nilas means navy. As you can see, the very sound of the word, and the color designated by it, are completely different from what is now available in Russian and French. But so often happens with words.
All this, of course, is informative, but it is unlikely to help understand how to get a purple color. The method of obtaining this color will depend on what material you need to use. It is necessary to work with different types of paints in different ways, and when choosing colors on a computer completely different manipulations will be carried out.
Gouache and oil
How to get a purple color when mixing paints? It is formed on the basis of purple. To get purple dye, you can mix red and blue. Since the lilac is lighter, it will be necessary to add white. They need to take about the same as the resulting purple paint. If the desired shade is even lighter, closer to lilac, white will be needed more.
Using gouache, you can immediately take the purple paint. It should be borne in mind that violet can be different - in sets and separately for sale there are “Purple K” paints, which have a more reddish tint, and “Purple C”, which has a slight blue. Therefore, you should carefully select the purple paint and, if necessary, adjust the shade by adding red or blue, and only then add white.
There is another algorithm for obtaining purple. In a bowl for mixing paints, you must first mix the pink and blue colors, combining the blue and red paint with white in half. After that, they need to be mixed with each other, and it will turn purple. Work with oil paints almost completely coincides with the method described above.
For large surfaces
But not only artists use oil paints. If lilac is the color of the interior, then you can get it in a completely different way. In hardware stores, the spectrum of colors is not so great, so you can contact a specialized store. There you can choose the right color using the color catalog. The paint is mixed in special machines, so it turns out to be quite a lot for painting surfaces.
Watercolor
In general, the way to get the purple color is similar to the previous ones, but there is an important nuance. When drawing with watercolor, whitewash is used extremely rarely. Their role is played by water, which makes the paint more transparent. Therefore, to get the lilac color, as already mentioned, white is not needed. It is enough to take the blue and red colors, mix them and dilute with water to the desired shade.
True, in many sets of watercolors, purple paint is already present, and you can use it. If you want to give the lilac color a shade closer to red or blue, you can add a little red or blue paint to purple. After that, do not forget to add enough water.
On the computer
Of course, the selection of the desired shade on the computer will differ from the process of mixing paints. How to do this depends on which shade is needed - approximate or accurate. If you need purple, you can rely on your taste. Then the algorithm is very simple. It is enough to put the eyedropper on the color wheel and select the desired color. Then the box on the taskbar that shows the selected color will turn purple.
If it is important to strictly convey a specific shade, then accuracy is not complete without numbers. When choosing a font color or background on the site, its designation is introduced using letters and numbers. And when choosing colors in Photoshop and other similar graphic editors, you need to specify some data. In RGB mode, the color is set by adding the red, blue, and green light of the screen. You need to set the right numbers for each color. Red and blue will be used, and since the lilac color is quite light, their intensity will be large.
CMYK mode is designed for printing, so it simulates the addition of colors in this process. Although it can be called not addition, but subtraction. The more colors overlap, the darker the color. And the colors used are slightly different - raspberry, blue and yellow. In lilac, raspberry and partly blue will prevail, and in order for the color to be light, a little intensity is needed. You can also use the color catalog on your computer.