A red-black tree is basically identical to a 2-3-4 tree(4-Btree), even though the splitting/swapping method is upside down.
2-3-4 trees have fixed-size 3-node buckets. The color black means that it's the central node of the 3-bucket. Any red-black tree is considered as a perfect quadtree/binary tree (of 3-node-buckets) with empty nodes(black holes and red holes).
In other words, every black node (every 3-bucket) has its absolute position in the perfect tree(2 dimensional unique Cartesian or 4-adic/2-adic unique fraction number).
NIL nodes are just extra flags to save space; you don't have enough memory to store a perfect quadtree/binary tree.
The easiest way to check a red-black tree is to check that each black node is a new bucket(going down) and each red node is grouped with the above black node(same bucket). If the central black node has less than 2 red nodes, you can just add empty red holes next to the central black node(left and right).
A new black node is always the grandson of the last black node, and each black node can have only two red daughter-nodes and no black son-nodes. If the red daughter(mother) is empty(dead/unborn), the motherless grandson-node is directly linked to its grandfather-node.
A motherless black grandson-node has no brother, but he can have a black cousin-node next to him; the 2 cousins are linked to the same grandfather.
A quadtree is a subset of a binary tree.
All black nodes have even heights(2,4,6...), and all red nodes have odd heights(1,3,5...). Optionally, you can use the half unit 0.5.
The 3-bucket has a fixed size 3; just add extra red holes(unborn unlinked red daughters) to make the size 3.