Carmine is the general term for some deep red colours that are very slightlypurplish but are generally slightly closer to red than the colour crimson is. Some rubies are coloured the colour shown below as rich carmine. The deep dark red color shown at right as carmine is the colour of the raw unprocessed pigment, but lighter, richer, or brighter colours are produced when the raw pigment is processed, some of which are shown below. The first recorded use of carmine as a color name in English was in 1523.
Variations of carmine
Wild watermelon
The color wild watermelon is displayed at right. Ultra red is a color formulated by Crayola in 1972. In 1990, the name of the color was changed to wild watermelon. With a hue code of 350, this color is within the range of carmine colors. This color is supposed to be fluorescent, but there is no mechanism for displaying fluorescence on a computer screen.
Radical red
The Crayola crayon color radical red is displayed at right. The color radical red was formulated by Crayola in 1990. With a hue code of 348, this color is within the range of carmine colors. This color is supposed to be fluorescent, but there is no mechanism for displaying fluorescence on a computer screen.
Paradise pink
Displayed at right is the color paradise pink. The source of this color is the "Pantone Textile Paper eXtended " color list, color #17-1755 TPX—Paradise Pink. Since it has a hue code of 347, the color paradise pink is within the range of carmine colors.
Rich carmine
The rich carmine color tone displayed at right matches the color shown as carmine in the 1930 book A Dictionary of Color. This color is also called Chinese carmine. This is the color usually referred to as carmine in fashion and interior design.
Spanish carmine is the color that is called Carmin in the Guía de coloraciones by Rosa Gallego and Juan Carlos Sanz, a color dictionary published in 2005 that is widely popular in the Hispanophone realm.
Pictorial carmine
Pictorial carmine is the color that is called Carmín pictórico in the Guía de coloraciones by Rosa Gallego and Juan Carlos Sanz, a color dictionary published in 2005 that is widely popular in the Hispanophone realm. This is a typical tone of carmine pigment used in painting.
The color Japanese carmine is shown at right. The name of this shade of carmine in Japanese is, literally "cochineal/rouge color", as means rouge, the cosmetics. The insect is called.
The name is often applied to descriptions of blood, because the dark carmine color of the raw pigment shown at the top of the page is the color of dried blood.
Music
Carmine is one of the colors mentioned in Donovan's "Wear Your Love Like Heaven".
Carmine red is second of two colors mentioned in Katatonia's song "Lethean".
Sports
Carmines is occasionally used as a nickname for the Boston Red Sox.
Carmine is an original colorway of the Air Jordan VI sneaker from 1991.
Television
The color worn by the redshirt who wears Star Treks carmine colored engineering uniforms is carmine. In addition, as a play on this, a quickly-dying soldier in the gameGears of War is named Carmine.
In Chapter 37 of House of Cards Season 3, during an interview between author Thomas Yates and Claire Underwood, during which Claire Underwood is having blood drawn, Underwood asks what color could be used to describe the color of the blood flowing through the tube, and Yates says, "carmine." Underwood responds, "You must be a writer."
