Name: Yasmin
Message: What is fuchsia or which colour is it? Is it possible to get a chart regarding colour mixing skills?

Fuchsia is a pinkish red, a very pure color composed of both red and blue wavelengths of light. The color fuchsia was named after a genus of flower, which in turn was named after a famous botanist, Leonhart von Fuchs. Fuchsia is an ideal red primary for using in mixing, analogous to the magenta in the cyan-magenta-yellow printing system. It is much brighter than any similar color you could mix by using a pure fire-engine red mixed with a purple, whether you are using dye, ink, or paint, and colors mixed using fuchsia as a primary will be brighter and clearer than those mixed using a true red.

You can view a color chart of dyes or paints at any online dye supplier. Of course, how true the colors you see will be depends to a great extent on your monitor; monitors vary in how they show colors. It is best to call your dye supplier and request a printed color chart, which they will have checked to see if the printed colors are correct. Until you receive your printed chart, however, you will find the online charts to be of some use. Here is a color chip from the old Tie-dyed.com web site for Jacquard brand Procion MX Fuchsia dye, which is the same dye as red MX-8B or Color Index reactive red 11; on my monitor, this color chip is not nearly as bright or blue as the real fuchsia dye.  For equivalent names and catalog numbers of other brands of this same type of dye, look at my page on "Which Procion MX colors are pure, and which mixtures?", at http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/FAQ/pureMXcolors.shtml.

An excellent way to play with mixing different colors of dye is to use Olli Niemitalo's Dye Mixer Applet. In addition, the Jacquard Procion MX Color Mixing Chart that used to be posted on the Tie-dyed.com web site can be a very useful resource in thinking about color mixing, although it uses pre-mixed colors in many of its formulas.

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