In the Green
One of the most common areas of difficulty for beginning & intermediate students is mixing believable greens. Greens that will harmonize & not look like you squeezed the color "straight out of the tube". Last week I talked about making my own dark/black. That dark is the basis for all my greens which I add...can you guess? My favorite Indian Yellow. This gives me a dark, fairly transparent mossy green that is the "mother color" of all my greens.
I then add Viridian or more Ultramarine Blue for a "cooler" version of the mossy (warmer) green. I will occasionally add Phthalo Blue if I really need to push the color. I try to lighten my colors with different tints of yellows, purples, greys...just about any color but rarely do I add pure white. While white will lighten & cool, it also makes colors chalky.
You can see from above that while I start with a desaturated green, I'm able to make beautiful saturated colors with a variety of temperature shifts. Harmonizing my greens happens because they all have a little bit of that mother color mixture in them.
It is but a very small sampling of green mixes. This way of mixing greens & having a limited palette gave me the confidence to mix any color. What better way to start your day at the easel already knowing that your palette will be harmony each & every time.
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