Mixing Greens: Revisiting Color Theory

Color TheoryAll

8 Dec

Mixing Greens: Revisiting Color Theory

This December, I am participating in the Play and Create Advent Calendar Challenge created by That Creative Space. If you would like to know more about this challenge or this amazing art community, you can check it out here.

For the second day of the challenge, they proposed the following exercise:

“The idea today is to grab your yellows, your blues, and your yellowish and bluish colours and get mixing.”
- Simone and Stephanie from That Creative Space -

When I started painting with watercolors, I spent a lot of time making color charts and mixing charts so I am aware of the general color theory rules, however, I really liked this exercise because I use a lot of green shades for my landscapes and I had recently added new yellows and blues to my studio palette.

It was time to revisit how all the colors of my studio palette mix, this time focused on mixing greens.

Base colors

You can see above the colors I chose from my palette to mix some greens. I wrote the names below as well for further reference:

Yellows:

Lemon Yellow (C)
Primary Yellow (N)
Yellow Ochre (W)
Isoindoline Yellow (W)

Blues:

Phthalo Blue (Green Shade) (C)
Cobalt Blue (N)
Ultramarine Blue (W)
Indanthrone Blue (W)

Bonus:

Phthalo Turquoise (C)
Neutral Tint (N)

Legend: (C) Cool color, (W) Warm color, (N) Neutral color

When I started this exercise, I only thought about using the Yellows and Blues in the categories above:

All these mixes drove me to the following learnings, some of them I already expected:

Warm Blues (such as Ultramarine and Indanthrone):

Warm Blue + Cool / Neutral Yellow = Warm Rich Greens
Warm Blue + Warm Yellow = Rich Browns, Greys, Neutral Colors
Learning: To create the greens you see in nature, it is useful to have warm blues and yellows

Neutral Blues (such as Cobalt Blue):

Neutral Blue + Cool / Neutral Yellow = Medium Greens
Neutral Blue + Warm Yellow = Medium Neutral Colors
Learning: Cobalt Blue makes very similar mixes than the other two Warm Blues in my palette

Cool Blues (such as Phthalo Blue):

Cool Blue + Cool / Neutral Yellow = Bright Greens
Cool Blue + Warm Yellow = Amazingly Rich Warm Greens
Learning: Cool blues are great addition to your palette as they will mix greens with ANY yellow.
Special Mention: Notice that Phthalo Blue was the only blue that produced a green when mixed with Yellow Ochre and Isoindoline Yellow!

This made me think if the blues in my studio palette are repetitive when mixing greens, I may need to rethink my color choices!

The good thing about challenge prompts is that you can interpret them however you want :) and if I am being honest, when I am painting something with my palette, I would not only stick to those colors to mix some greens, so in order to keep it real around here, I added two bonus colors that would spice things up a little: Phthalo Turquoise and Neutral Tint!

Okay, maybe Phthalo Turquoise’s behavior when mixed with the different yellows was not so different from the Phthalo Blue color mix chart, but I wanted to add it because I absolutely loved all the green gold / warm greens as well as those bright lime greens it can create! O_O

I decided it will be my go-to color when mixing greens from now on…

About Neutral Tint mixes I have two things to say:

It actually CAN mix GREENS !!
Sorry but this was breaking news for me :)
It does not act as a neutral color, but rather as a warm one if we compare these green swatches to the blue mixes.
This makes sense because Neutral Tint is a mix of three different pigments, in some cases containing a violet one.

Thank you for reading so far! I enjoyed very much revisiting this color theory part and writing the blog post.

Now I want to know about you! :)

Did you make this exercise recently? Is there any additional learning you would like to add to this reflection? What is your favorite color combo to mix greens?

I read you in the comments below!