September 2008 Monthly CLASS — The Green Scene

[CharM]

As Kermit the Frog declared, "It isn't easy being green..." It's even more difficult to create natural and interesting greens in a variety of hues and values.

So... let's work through our fear of foliage together...

When I initially decided to lead this Class, I didn't have any commitments for September... that has changed dramatically... My Son from the West Coast has been visiting, but will return home later this week... My husband's niece is getting married this Month, in Maine... we'll be travelling to and from the wedding and plan to stay there for a few days... So...

That's why this has become a KIUAN (Kick It Up A Notch) Exercise... besides which, your input is really a valuable commodity in these learning threads... I hope you'll participate as much as possible...

There are some excellent resources at your fingertips... Michael Wilcox's book, Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green, is one of the first books I studied on colour. Hilary Page's Color Right from the Start is excellent. I love Exploring Color by Nita Leland.

Michael Wilcox also has an online site and This Page explains mixing greens with confidence.

If you do a WC! Search on "Mixing Greens", you'll get a plethora of discussion threads about this very topic.

Here's my Outline and what I hope we can accomplish...

First and foremost, we need to understand what it is we really want to do... and how to do it...

Charts... let's break out the yellows and blues... let's squeeze out some tube greens and mix everything up to see what we get...

Foliage... let's analyze the foliage and greens around us... the atmosphere really DOES impact what we see... We could also do a tree study... i.e. what shapes do certain trees take... Seasonally, how are the greens affected?

Living things vs. Inanimate objects... does it really matter what greens we choose for our still life's?

Charts:

Creating your own chart is like working through a visual research project.

It is good to know why you're doing a chart and what do you want to get out of it? For example:

-What greens can be mixed from the colours you already own?

-Based on this exercise, what colors do you want to keep/add/remove from your palette?

-What mixes are the most intriguing and useful?

-Did you experience any surprises?


I work from a limited palette and don't buy too many colours... Here are my yellows and blues... This is the first stage of my chart... I have a couple of blue tubes that are not on my palette and I'll include them in this chart. I also want to make a second chart using my tube greens.

When you begin your chart, I suggest you mix blue into your yellows... it takes less dark colour to achieve your desired result...



Take your time to figure out the best process for your charts before beginning.

What size works best? My grid is drawn up on 90# cp paper, torn to 7.5 x 11"

Decide how much water to use. Even the most transparent colors can produce seemingly opaque mixes if too little water is used. Similarly, if too much water is used, all mixes will get the same washed out appearance.

Remember to mix carefully so that your colours and mixes are clean.

Take your time to observe color mixing properties as you go.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself as you work through this exercise...

• Does the color feel opaque or transparent?
• Does the color consistently overwhelm its mixing partners?
• Does the color display capillary action at the edges?
• Is the color warm or cool?
• Can it be replaced by another color that produces similar mixes?
• Is the color/mix bright or dull when viewed from a few feet away?
• How do the mixes of one color compare to another?

Take notes, writing your observations on your chart so you remember what you learned from your exercise.

This exercise is going to prove unequivocally that blue and yellow really do make green... However, I'm excited to see what kind of greens I'm going to get... I'll post those next.

So... for the first exercise of this KIUAN (Kick It Up A Notch), show me your Charts!!! Let the GREENS begin!!

[CharM]

Some food for thought... Green Recipes!

Cobalt blue + Aureolin (transparent, excellent for glazing)

Cobalt blue + Winsor yellow (cool, nice for distant trees)

Phthalo blue + permanent yellow (intense, cool green for bright plumage or sunlit grasses)

Antwerp blue + winsor yellow (subdued, cool green for pears and apples)

French ultramarine blue + winsor yellow (warm light green, foreground foliage)

French ultramarine blue + quinacridone gold (warm, olive green..nice for fields)

Viridian + cool yellow = bright yellow-green

Viridian + cool yellow + a touch of warm red= greyed green

Viridian + light red (a brown-red by winsor newton) = midtone green (a terrific green!)

Viridian + indian red = dark green

Viridian + mostly permanent rose =shades of red-violet & mauve

Viridian + permanent rose = silvery green

Viridian + violet = a grayed green or a grayed violet

Viridian + alizarin crimson = dark darks

Cobalt turquoise + winsor yellow... or quin gold... bothare just gorgeous!!!

[painterbear]

Char,
Thanks for doing this exercise/class on greens. It is going to be so much fun and informative.

Love the idea of charting our greens from the colors we already have in our kits. Will get one going later today.



Sylvia

[Lin Frye]

I am so looking forward to this!! Living in North Carolina (US) and in the woodlands, it seems EVERYTHING around me is GREEN!!! THANK YOU for doing this!

[rgb]

These charts were done last year when I first started with watercolors. A 9x12 watercolor pad was trimmed down to 9x6, and the charts are done on facing pages. These are MaimeriBlu colors. My scanner doesn't give true colors, so consider the scan "close enough".





There are also two facing charts with greens mixed with greens and greens mixed with blues.

Some of my charts haven't been completed, but enough have been so that I have a general idea about what will happen with mixes. When I was beginning, I barely knew the names of a few colors, and mixes were a complete mystery. Now I know my colors, and I can translate them among brands. The charts have been a great reference for me because they give me a starting point for mixing. I can still make some really lousy mixes, but that is more because of inexperience and frustration when I can't get it right within two minutes.

I'll eventually finish the charts because there are color families I don't use often, and it's so easy to refer to the charts for mixes.

Making a W&N chart was considered, but these charts take forever(!), so the MaimeriBlu charts and experience will do nicely.

Here is a list of my pages, divided by spreads:

Yellow + Yellow
-----------------------------
Yellow + Green
Yellow + Blue
-----------------------------
Green + Green
Green + Blue
-----------------------------
Blue + Blue
Blue + Red
-----------------------------
Yellow + Red
Yellow + Earth
-----------------------------
Red + Red
Red + Earth
-----------------------------
Green + Red
Green + Earth
-----------------------------
Earth + Earth
Earth + Blue

Raw Sienna is with both the Yellows and the Earths.

The most beneficial thing for me with charts is being able to see a color close to what I really want, and the exercise of doing them taught me a lot. Third colors are not included in my charts, but time has taught me some of the colors I can toss in to change a mix. I don't go beyond a third color.

[susanhaig]

Thanks for doing this Char! I sure needed your help. Sue

[painterbear]

Char,
I have a question about doing these charts. How do you mix the colors? Do you first paint a strip of blue, the add a strip of the yellow through it while it is wet?

or

Do you mix a little puddle of the combo on your palette, then paint it in the square?

Not sure what the best procedure is to get a real feel for the green that results.

Sylvia

[CharM]

Syl... I'll reply to you first...

In working your Charts, you'll be MIXING your colour in the wells of your palette... You don't need a lot of paint, for sure...

So... activate a little yellow and place it in a mixing well... Clean your brush thoroughly and activate a little blue... mix that into the yellow and use the resulting green in the appropriate box of your grid. You don't need much blue!!!

Remember to use approximately the same amount of water in the activation of each colour. The ratio of paint to water is important and will affect the resulting secondary colour.

It's also possible to make a set of Charts by GLAZING your colour...

Again... activate a little blue and paint a stripe on your Chart. Let that dry thoroughly. Activate a little yellow and paint a stripe over top of the blue already painted in the box of your grid.

You can also work the reverse... in that you'll paint a little yellow, let it dry and glaze over it with blue.

Make notes. In all three examples, the resulting colour will look DIFFERENT.

Finally... you can also make charts by working wet-in-wet... In essence, you are mixing your colour on your paper... I love *mingling* my colour in this manner... It really looks beautiful in foliage, for example.

Activate your yellow and paint a swatch on your paper in two places... Activate your blue and paint a swatch below the first yellow one, and while the yellow is still wet, *charge* the blue into that second swatch. The blue will move into the yellow and the resulting colour is beautiful and the transitions are clean. It's nearly impossible to make mud when *mingling* colour.

Playing with quinacridone gold, I made this chart up very quickly... it's on a piece of 5x7 paper... I keep these chits together and they form a set of notes that I often refer back to... The colour in this example is not representative of the true hues in the chart, but I think you can see what I'm talking about.



Lin, I have hundreds and hundreds of photo references from my own neck of the woods... and the greens are definitely abundant!!!

Jenny... your charts are fantastic! Good for you... not enough people try to understand their colours BEFORE trying to paint with them!

Sue... I'm looking forward to your participation!!!

[rgb]

Sylvia, I don't know about Char, but I did mine by mixing the colors on my palette then painting them on the chart. Mine are roughly 1/2 and 1/2, but I've read about people carefully measuring two drops of each color which originally started with the same number of drops of water to the pigments. That much care would have ended my career in making color charts.

I did take a yellow and mix it with each of the blues, then on to the next yellow. A lot of brush cleaning is involved.

Edit: And, Char answered while I typed! *lol*

[painterbear]

Char and Jenny,
Thanks for your quick responses. I can see that making several charts utilizing the various ways of mixing the colors might be useful as well.

Sylvia

[Lawrence Fox]

Last spring, I took a workshop on "The Greens of Spring and Summer" (and I'll upload some notes later on....) and subsequently did some charts.

These are all W&N paints

I've tried to split them on a warm/cool layout, since the workshop leader felt that the time of year should influence which side of the spectrum you use.

This one is my yellows and blues. Some of the mixtures were done "wet-in-wet" on the paper, and some were done on the palette. Often, they colours are slightly different.

The scan makes some of the warmer combos look bluish-purple, but believe me, they're green. Maybe when my digi-cam comes back from the shop, I'll try to photograph them and the colours will look a bit better.

I'd say that most of the earth-tones with blue are warmer but that probably infludence by the red component of the paints. Also, I'd say that that the FUB-Raw Umber mix comes close in some respects to the perylene green tube mixture:



I've picked up a few more blues since I did the chart, but haven't updated the chart yet .

[Lawrence Fox]

This chart is my tube greens plus yellow (haven't got around yet to tube greens + blue or tube greens + red, but they might be interesting). This chart, in part, sparked my question at the Ontario Meet (and the thread earlier this summer) about Sap Greens vs Hooker's Greens--since, on my chart, to my eye, there wasn't a significant colour difference between them.

The perylene green in the scans is maroon--but it's really a blackish green. Darn!

[CharM]

Those are great looking charts, Lawrence... and you raise an excellent point about the introduction of other colours...

I don't purchase many convenience colours, so my tubes are generally single pigment mixes. Of course, as with anything, there are exceptions... My Gamboge is a perfect example of that. Anyway... for my own purposes, I've decided to keep my Charts as isolated as possible...

That is... I'll mix my single colours initially... all my yellows with all my blues.

THEN, I'd like to analyze my tube greens... the exercise will be similar, in that I'll mix those greens with yellow and blue...

However... I feel that real life is not isolated to greens and blues and we MUST introduce other colour...

Once I understand my more pure mixes, I can move on to the introduction of earth colours, reds and purples... I think that trying to be as orderly about this as possible will diminish my confusion about the greens I mix... and will help, inevitably, with the quality of colour and harmony in my work.

Harmony is an important factor here... because in choosing a palette for a particular work, we can learn to limit the number of colours, increase the range of hues, and maintain the harmonious flow... all by just understanding WHAT our mixes can do for us!!!

Wow...

I have already realized that I have three yellows and need only one of them... The M. Graham Azo Yellow is similar enough to the W&N Winsor Yellow and the D. Smith Hansa Yellow, that the differences on paper are not readily discernable. I'll not be replacing two of those colours.

[Violetta]

Count me in on this one, too, Char! I need work on greens and on foliage, which I hope will be included.

[lpb]

This is a great topic and I've already rated this thread! I started on some experimental mixes this weekend when I was trying to match some specific greens in a rug I bought, and want to repeat the hues in a painting. It was very hard to duplicate some of the colors and I wasn't totally successful. However, I will get on with it and work on more formal charts. rgb, thank you for showing how you organized your pages. This will be a great help.