Mixing Red Gold

I recently received an email asking How to mix Red Gold. The writer was concerned with the cost of buying it in a tube and was curious to know if it is possible to mix it herself.

Red Gold is a beautiful, warm, transparent colour.  I love it and often use it, both as a colour in its' own right and for mixing various greens. It is what I call a convenience colour. While it is certainly possible to mix the colour yourself, I don't think there is any advantage in doing so.

The pigments that make up Red Gold are PY74 (Transparent Yellow) and PR.175 (Permanent Brown Madder). An easy mix if you have these colours. However Permanent Brown Madder is a series 3 colour, same as Red Gold, so there would be no cost saving in mixing it yourself, at least that is the case with the paints I usually work with.

Because Red Gold is transparent, to mix a colour that behaves in the same way other transparent colours must be used. In my colour experiments the closest I could get to Red Gold using other colours was a mix of Permanent Alizarin (which contains PR.175) and Indian Yellow (which contains PY.74). Permanent Alizarin is a relatively expensive colour so again there would be no cost saving.

The cheapest mix that I could achieve that looked similar to Red Gold was a mix of Indian Yellow and Crimson.

If anyone has had success using other colours to create a Red Gold please share.