Honoring Spring, Mixing Greens
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day and the Spring Equinox, I am doing a series of “How to Mix Green” videos. I start the series exploring St. Patrick’s Day Green, which is a bright spring green.
Spring Green
Cerulean & Cad Yellow Light / Phthalo Turquoise & Lemon Yellow
How do we decide which yellow and which blue to use for a Spring Green? Starting with the yellow, we look for a bright clean green, so the best yellow will lean towards green on the color wheel and are also considered cool yellows. A few cool yellow choices might be:
Lemon Yellow
Hansa Yellow
Cadmium Yellow Light or Pale
Our blue needs to be a nice clean blue that also leans towards green on the color wheel. A few green blues to choose from are:
Prussian
Cerulean
Phalo
Pthalo Turquoise
Turquoise
Of course if any of these greens have too much spring in them, then you can neutralize them by adding red (the compliment). I use Burnt Sienna a lot as my red to neutralize greens.
Mixing greens using ultramarine blue
Mixing greens using Ultramarine Blue leans towards a more natural grayed down green by nature, because the Ultramarine Blue leans towards red with is the compliment of green.
In this video, I use the following yellows to see what greens I get. Watch to see how different these greens are.
Cad Lemon
Cad Yellow Light
Cad Yellow Medium
Yellow Ochre
My go-to Greens
My palette tends towards more natural grayed down greens most of the time. These formulas are where I usually start and then I can manipulate them as needed depending on what I am painting. Note that I used Burnt Sienna by WInsor Newton specifically.
Light Natural Green: Ultramarine Blue + Cad Yellow Light + Burnt Sienna (a tad) + White
Mid-Tone Natural Green: Ultramarine Blue + Cad Yellow Medium + Burnt Sienna (a tad) + White
Dark Natural Green: Ultramarine Blue + Cad Yellow Deep + Burnt Sienna (a tad)
Tube Greens
I believe that everyone should be skilled at mixing and understanding greens from scratch before using tube greens. So, take some time to explore all your blue and yellow choices and make some color charts. I also understand having some short-cuts to speed up our mixing time. However, I am not willing to sacrifice the quality of the color. There are only a few Tube Greens I feel are as good or better than what I can mix.
Here are a few greens that I use regularly:
Cad Green Light, Williamsburg — A nice mid-tone spring green
Olive Green, Winsor Newton — A luminous, transparent, very dark, grayed-down green
Cinnabar Green Light, Old Holland — Another beautiful spring green
I hope everyone enjoyed this mixing series. Please email me with requests!
Stay healthy and safe,
Angela