Mixing Greens Redux

The subject of mixing green comes up several times a year in my classes and workshops. Here's the chart I demonstrated last week in my Hithergreen class on mixing a great variety of greens with the blues and yellows you already have in your paint box. It's worthwhile to take a couple of hours to make this chart so you have a reference for the different greens you can mix, at least until you become really familiar with them by using them often. I use white artist's tape to section the paper into 2-inch squares or slightly larger rectangles. Across the top I put the yellows, one per section: Winsor Lemon, Aureolin, New Gamboge and Raw Sienna are on this chart. Down the left side I place the blues: Cobalt Blue, French Ultramarine, Phthalo Blue Green Shade, and Cerulean Blue. I dampen a square and put a swatch of the yellow in that column in one corner and the blue in the row in the other corner. Then I mingle the two colors on my palette and place the mixture at the bottom of the section, teasing the colors up into the pure colors so I get variations of the mixture throughout. The chart includes spring, summer, late autumn, bright, misty, foggy and sea greens with just one blue and one yellow in each mixture. Before you begin a painting, see if you can find the greens you need on the chart and include those colors in your palette. See also my blog on Mixing With Green.

Mixing with green

Although I teach my beginning classes to mix greens using various combinations of yellow and blue, depending on how bright or dull they want the green to be in their picture, there are always a few who continue to use unmixed tube greens. There aren't any really satisfactory natural-looking greens in most paints. Some of the older, now discontinued Hooker's greens were fairly good, but most weren't lightfast. The new Hooker's greens shown in the second row at the left are brighter, but less natural. Olive green, even though it's a beautiful color, makes for boring landscape greens when used as the only green. Phthalocyanine (Thalo) Green is jarring and hard to control. So what we talked about on Monday was taking time out from painting to explore mixing tube greens with every other color on your palette or in your paint box to see what colors you can make. Here are just a few samples. You can make just about any green starting with phthalo green and adding another color in different amounts. In the top row, the first swatch on the left is Winsor Green Blue Shade. Next to it is viridian, which is pretty weak in watercolor and not a great mixer. Below are two swatches of Hooker's green. Everything else was mixed using the Winsor Green and a blue, yellow, magenta or burnt sienna. Try this for yourself and remember to label your swatches in case you want to create the same color later. Using just one green and mixing the others with colors you're using in other parts of your painting makes for much more vibrant, exciting greens that look more natural than tube greens. Try this with other colors, too, and you'll find you can learn to match tube colors. See p. 54 in Exploring Color.

The pigment color wheel is finished

Finally I've finished the watercolor wheel I started for my class several weeks ago. I did blue first, then added red the following week and yellow a week later. (Click on the "color wheel" label below to see the three work sheets and watercolor wheels that I painted last month.) Today I filled in orange, green and violet secondary colors and the neutrals in the center. I finished it in my studio so the class wouldn't lose painting time next week. I'll show them the finished wheel, explain a couple of things and they can examine it more closely later if they wish. Mind you, I'm not advocating having or using all these colors. I want to show that there's a continuum around the color wheel that reveals temperature relativity from one color to the next. This is a good exercise for your "color eye," to see if you can distinguish between warmer and cooler colors and see how their neighbors on the wheel influence their temperature. The colors around the perimeter of the wheel are mostly high tinting-strength, high-intensity colors. Except for a few colors in the red area, outside the perimeter are the low tinting-strength, high-intensity colors. Inside the wheel are the low-intensity colors and neutrals.

Here's the test sheet for the colors I did today. It doesn't matter whether you make a wheel or swatches, but this is a good way of learning about your paints. As I said in an earlier post, the color wheel above is similar to the one I made for my first Exploring Color book, published in 1985.

Color mixing charts--green and black

Canadian artist Zan Barrage has done a great job showing the mixtures of colors he has explored to mix low-intensity greens and blacks. I wish more artists would take the time to do this. They would have fewer problems using color in their artwork. It isn't the pigments themselves that cause the problems most of the time--it's not knowing their characteristics and how they will react in mixtures with other colors. Another important point is that the colors should be integrated throughout the painting and not just used to mix the green and the black.

Exploring options in color

I'm always amused when I'm teaching a new class, whether in watercolor, color, collage or design, to find students who firmly avow that they do things in a certain way and aren't about to change. This isn't typical of every class, but now and then one shows up. All I can do is think to myself, "So, why are you here?" I try to be flexible and help them do what they want to do. Sometimes they come around to trying something different and sometimes they don't. We'll see how this plays out in my current color class. Most of the students are working on pigment studies and learning a lot about paint characteristics. A couple have skipped lightly over these, one saying she already knows all that and the other insisting that she is happy with her limited palette and doesn't like all the bright colors, which hurt her eyes. The first I gave an assignment to paint the four seasons using a different set of primaries for each one to better express the qualities of the season through color. She said, "I always use the same colors for all my paintings." Period. End of discussion. I asked her to try it, showing how Phthalo Blue makes a cooler, more wintry sky than French Ultramarine; how Lemon Yellow with Phthalo Blue makes a spring-ier green for trees. She agreed to try it, but I didn't feel she was happy about it. I looked at her sketches about halfway through and could see the seasons revealed in her colors. She finished them off beautifully and I think she was pleased, albeit a little grudgingly. I found the second student looking at pure-hue color wheels in my workbook and holding her head, as if in pain. She says she just wants to learn to use the colors she has. She doesn't think she needs more colors, because she can do what she wants with what she has to mix naturalistic landscape colors. I turned the workbook to a page where six color wheels show different combinations of primaries, including earth hues. In about two seconds she decided she had to have Indigo and maybe a couple other colors on those wheels. I think both are on the way to opening their minds about exploring color options to get more excitement in their work. We'll see in a couple of weeks what the next challenge brings.

Mixing earth colors

When I first started painting in watercolors I read all of the popular books of the time by such noted artists as Rex Brandt, Herb Olsen, John Pike, Edgar Whitney and many others. I kept notes on the artists' palettes and eventually discovered that there were certain "workhorse" colors that appeared on nearly every palette. French ultramarine, burnt umber, alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow and yellow ochre were the most common. The next tier included Prussian blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna, sepia, cadmium red, brown madder alizarin and Hooker's green. My own palette grew exponentially until there simply wasn't enough room for all the colors the experts recommended.

Fortunately, about that time I began to get a sense of what my own preferences were and the first colors to depart my palette were the earth colors. Why? Because I found I could mix them so easily starting from primary and secondary colors. I found I could make Payne's gray and burnt umber with French ultramarine and burnt sienna. Then I discovered that burnt sienna makes a lovely earth mixture with every other color on my palette. (Note: I use only Winsor & Newton Burnt Sienna.) I also found that by mixing complements (opposites), on the way to achieving neutral mixtures there is a range of earth mixtures that is nothing short of stunning.

So now I don't keep earth colors on my palette, unless I have a specific need for them in a painting.* To me the mixtures are far more beautiful. If I don't mix too much, I can achieve variations of every earth hue that add to the color excitement in a painting. That's the way I like it.

*More on this in another blog.

Urban Myth: Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green

Have you fallen for that one? If so, you probably don't mix greens but use tube greens like phthalo, Hooker's or sap green instead to be on the safe side. It's likely that your greens all look pretty much the same and are somewhat unnatural-looking. No matter what your subject matter, if you paint realistically you want your greens to have the variety you see in nature.

Let's debunk the myth about blue and yellow. There are innumerable beautiful pigment variations of these two colors that will make every green you can possibly imagine. A simple rule of color theory will help you mix the green you want: When mixing a secondary color (green) from two primaries (blue and yellow), avoid the third primary (red), which is the complement (opposite) of the secondary mixture (green).

For example, to mix bright greens use cool pigments: phthalo blue and cadmium lemon or Winsor Lemon. To mix low-intensity natural greens, use ultramarine and any warm yellow, such as New Gamboge, cadmium yellow medium or Indian yellow, which all have a hint of red that knocks the intensity down a bit.

If you still like to use tube greens occasionally, tone them down by mixing with any color that has a reddish cast, such as burnt sienna, or a touch of alizarin crimson or cadmium red.

Problems with color in art prints

An artist asked me recently why his art prints seemed duller than the original painting. We discussed his palette and found what I believed to be the culprits: Opera and French Ultramarine. Opera is a bright fluorescent pink. Like all fluorescent colors, Opera is outside the "gamut," or range of colors that can be reproduced with accuracy. French Ultramarine isn't fluorescent, but it can't be reproduced accurately with four-color process and ink-jet printing, which use cyan, a greenish-blue. Most greens mixed with French Ultramarine and yellow are somewhat grayed in printing because of the red bias of this blue pigment. If you know your color theory, you know that mixing all three primary colors neutralizes color mixtures.

It's disappointing to spend time on a painting that turns out well but reproduces poorly. To get the best colors in prints, create your painting with colors similar to those used in printers' inks: magenta, yellow and cyan. In recent years manufacturers have offered artists good matches for these colors in pigments. Quinacridone Magenta is a close match, but you can also try Permanent Rose or any other bluish-red. Any yellow that isn't too orange or too green will work, such as Transparent Yellow or Hansa Yellow Light. The best cyan I've found is Winsor Blue Green Shade, which is about the same as Thalo Blue. You need a greenish-blue. Using a limited palette of "safe" colors will assure that your print will match your painting.

Even if you don't plan to print, it's wise to use a somewhat limited palette; you don't have to worry about the color gamut. Here's more on limited palettes and using triads in painting.

How many new colors do we need?

I finally got the 15 new Winsor & Newton watercolors tested that McCallister's Art Store provided me. My tests aren't scientific and my results are subjective. I test for transparency, tinting strength, spreading quality, reaction to salt and staining property.

As I look at my chart, I'm struck first of all by the brilliance of the fluorescent Opera Rose, which is in my mind a gorgeous, though useless, color for watercolor painters. I've seen so few who could handle Holbein's Opera and I try to keep my students away from it. It doesn't reproduce well, as it is out of the gamut for 4-color printing, so artists who use it are invariably disappointed in their color reproductions.

There are some very nice low-intensity pigments that would work well with the low-key palettes in my Exploring Color system of compatible colors. I especially like Potter's Pink, Perylene Green, Terre Verte Yellow Shade and Perylene Violet. Unfortunately, the Perylene Violet isn't even close to Thioindigo Violet, which it supposedly replaces.

Cerulean Blue Red Shade is a nice addition. I used to alternate with other brands when I wanted that color, although it isn't all that different from Cerulean Blue.

Phthalo Turquoise istoo close to Winsor Blue Green Shade to be worth bothering about. It seems to be an attempt to get a one-pigment blue-green, but I'd rather have Rembrandt's Turquoise Blue, a mixed pigment, on my palette to fill that slot. It sits right between Winsor Blue Green Shade and Winsor Green and is one of those colors that makes my heart beat faster. I know I can mix it with WGBS and WBGS but it's wonderful to have it right at hand when I want it.

Lemon Yellow Deep appears to be a rather delicate color, and I like it. I'm afraid it will confuse my beginning students, though, as it doesn't seem to have the tinting strength of Winsor Lemon, which they need for my split-primary color-mixing system. The Turner Yellow may be worth further investigation. It has a softness to it that I like.

Winsor Orange Red Shade is vibrant and might make a nice change from Cadmium Scarlet, which is one of my favorites. But I don't like the Winsor Red Deep, which reminds me of Grumbacher's Cadmium Red Deep, a murky, difficult color in watercolor.

The remaining colors, Brown Ochre, Magnesium Brown, Mars Black and Yellow Ochre Light might have their place on some artists' palettes, but I don't see them anywhere on mine. They're all easily made with mixtures of other earth pigments on the palette. The black is a possible exception. I tend to be biased against black because I've never found a good one in watercolor, so I'll give it a try.

As for the discontinued colors, the only one I'll miss is Thioindigo Violet, as it's such a great red-violet. Perylene Violet is too low-intensity to take its place.

If WN's objective is to "increase the spectrum across the range," there are just two places where I feel they fall short. On my 12-pigment color wheel, made up mostly of Winsor & Newton colors, I use Rembrandt Turquoise Blue for blue-green. None of WN's colors fill that slot, as they are either too opaque or lacking the tinting strength I need. Please note that on WN's 4-color printed chart the representation of Phthalo Turquoise is misleading and looks more like the color I want than the actual paint does. (I know how hard it is to reproduce color with CMYK, but I feel that the current printed chart isn't nearly as accurate as the previous one was.)

At blue-violet I use Old Holland Blue-Violet. This is also a mixed-pigment color, but there is no WN color close to this one. Ultramarine Violet is too red and too weak in tinting strength for the colors I use in the expanded palettes in my book, Exploring Color.

Ongoing efforts to improve colors are admirable, but I deplore the continual offering of new colors by some manufacturers as pure marketing that doesn't serve the needs of artists. Students carry around dozens of tubes of colors they don't need and can't use until they've learned basic color mixing. Once they've mastered mixing with six colors, they hardly need any others, as they can mix nearly everything they want. If artists are looking for a magic color, I tell them there is only one: Winsor & Newton Burnt Sienna. If they ever change that one, I may have to give up painting.

That said, it's always fun to play with new colors and now and then something I haven't used before jumps onto my palette and stays for awhile. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it works.