A friend (and reader of this blog) recently asked me about my greens. She very kindly said she thought they were delicious – which is a really lovely compliment – and asked if I could share something about my choice of pigments and mixing. Of course! I said.
It’s true that artists, and particularly watercolour painters, get more wound up about green than any other colour. Depending on how things are going, I feel this way too – excited one minute and then despairing the next. (But that’s watercolour for you.) These days I spend more time drawing and sketching rather than exclusively painting, so colour mixing isn’t quite the all absorbing preoccupation for me that it once was. But if you want to use colour at all, you do need to spend time getting familiar with the paints you’re using, and that means playing around a bit and finding out what works for you.
Every now and then I do a page or two of colour mixes in my current sketchbook. If this sounds boring, it’s not – in fact it’s a very relaxing thing to do and since I love doing it I really should do it more often. It somehow manages to be calming and exciting at the same time, and it gets a background understanding of pigments into my head so it makes decisions about mixing much easier and quicker so that everything flows more smoothly. I don’t think it matters much exactly how you do these colour mixing charts – the important thing is just to be methodical and work out a way that feels enjoyable.
Where greens are concerned I like to start with a yellow that makes good mixes, and lately most of the time I use Transparent Yellow (Winsor & Newton). Starting with this and adding just one other pigment at a time in different quantities gives a huge range of mixing possibilities even with a very limited palette (and I never have more than 10 or 12 colours in my tin – mostly I use just 8). The pigments I most often add to yellow are Ultramarine Blue, Phthalo Turquoise, Winsor Green (blue shade), Paynes Grey, and Winsor Violet -Winsor Violet with yellow gives lovely complex neutral tones. Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine are my favourites for greys and neutrals. For really strong neutrals I go for Burnt Umber and Paynes Grey, and for really deep dark greens I sometimes use Burnt Umber and Winsor Blue or Winsor Green. Occasionally instead of Transparent Yellow I use Olive Green as a start and add variously to it – it’s not a green I especially like on it’s own.
Obviously sometimes I mix more than just two pigments – but rarely more than three, and I try to use mostly transparent colours.
Being a transparent medium watercolour relies on transparency for its luminous glow, and some pigments have more of this quality than others. Some are less transparent and some are opaque. So mixing two transparent pigments keeps a colour transparent, and the more you add semi-transparent or opaque pigments, the less luminosity you acheive. If you mix two opaque pigments together you end up with something dull. (Helpfully, all pigments are marked on their manufacturer’s colour charts with symbols that tell you what qualities they have.)
A note of warning – following what colours other people use can be helpful, but everyone has personal preferences and I’ve occasionally made the mistake of buying a slightly unusual colour just because someone else has said it’s a great favourite of theirs, and discovering I really hate it! I’ve found by experience that it’s better to get very familiar with the colours that you have, and then gradually experiment with others. I have a number of pigments that I rarely use but then re-discover, and others that are core essentials that always stay in my tin. As for the tin itself, that’s a whole subject on its own – I have three, in various sizes – but to round up, here’s a list of the pigments I always have available:
Transparent Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Paynes Grey, Winsor Violet, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Windsor Green, Permanent Rose, Windsor Red.
Your friend is right, your greens are delicious! And they are a colour to agonise over. I only use watercolour in my sketchbook so don’t consider myself a watercolourist, but finding (making) good greens is always tricky. I like a limited palette too, and have a Winsor and Newton travelling paint set, which I love, with its own water container and fold-out palettes. It comes with 12 colours of which I use about 6, but like you every now and then ‘discover’ one of the others! The only extra colour I have bought is a purple, as it is vital for some flowers, and it’s impossible to mix a really clean clear purple. Thank you for this, I always enjoy your posts!
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I’ve always admired your use of colour. And you’re right, however little you use it, it always matters to pay attention to it. I’ve never used a ready-filled watercolor tin so I must look at the W&N one you mention just out of curiosity to see what it contains. I buy tube paint and fill my own tins because I’m so fussy about how things are arranged and exactly what I have (which keeps changing anyway)!
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The pans in the W&N set can be moved and changed, which is quite handy – but it did come filled with one or two unusual colours! It does come with a fine travel brush, but I carry two good quality travel brushes as well. All in all though, it is a very portable kit!
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Your greens, no doubt, are wonderful. But right now I am struck by the magical things that happened when you mixed Burnt Sienna with Winsor Violet! I’ve never thought of Winsor Violet as a good basic colour – now I do!
Thank you!
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Isn’t it fun when you suddenly realise there a a whole new range of possibilities with a colour! I love trying out odd and unlikely mixes because you can make such surprising and exciting discoveries. You’re right, it’s magical!
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Fascinating post – illuminating and practical in equal measure. Thanks so much for sharing how you go about greens – I have taken notes! My first task is to go through my colours and establish their transparency / opacity. I have occasionally done grids of colour-mixing as you’ve shown but realise it would be good to do this more often as I experiment with new colours. I also love the w/c sketches that illustrate the post – especially the last one, so delicate.
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Glad you enjoyed it and I’d love to hear how you get on with your mixing experiments and colour charts! Thanks for prompting me to do this – it was a very interesting exercise and valuable to think things through and explain them. Always happy to discuss things like this!
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Why didn’t I find this before? I just picked this post at random to tell you how much I like all the posts and your work here. Delicious. I love, love your watercolor work, and the way the photos complement it is brilliant. I’ll go look some more now…
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You’re making me wiggle my toes again…… this makes me very happy!
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