The Wild World of Green

Study of the wild world of greens has led me to pre-mix over 104 different greens that are tuned to exact specifications. By pre-mixing these colors, which are calibrated to specific dominant wavelengths for each hue of green, I’m hoping to discover patterns in how green can be used in color design and painting. My current painting series studies how green harmonizes with other colors and how humans perceive this versatile hue.

This article is an exploration of the color green through the eyes of a painter and explores potential reasons why green is often such a difficult color for painters to use well

Ireland May have 40 Shades of Green

… But, I hate to say it, that’s not nearly enough. After mixing 104 shades of green, I haven’t even begun to explore the duller, less saturated greens yet. And even after tackling the 104 saturated shades of green, I find that among those there is still room for more differentiation!

Why might a person pre-mix over a hundred shades of green? As an artist, green is enchanting because it is complex.  Put in a slightly more crypic way, green defies many painters’ attempts to decode its inner logic.  I will quote other painters here who have run up against the same quandries. Artist, Samuel Earp, wrote that among the spectral hues, “Green is a colour that is difficult to get right, full stop,” while painter Will Kemp says, “Green paint is like peanut butter is for dieters, dangerously addictive.  I don’t quite know why, maybe the freshness, the feeling of a landscape, the memory of nature… whatever the reason it’s a bad one.”

So what is going on with this color? Why the vibes about green? This blog entry is not a run-of-the-mill how to mix greens for painters post (though if you would like to read those, I’ll point you towards my favorite one a bit later). This post sums up a list of the common suggestions employed for handling greens, and also explores the question of why green is such a tricky shade in the first place. Full disclosure, this post reflects research-in-progress, and as the theoretical questions surrounding the color green are deep and wide, this post raises more questions than it answers.

Also I must add that this blog sometimes uses language about seeing and uses the plural “we.” The subject of this post is about human vision, and I want to note that not all humans see, and not all humans see in the same ways— especially when it comes to the color green. This post is about the color vision experience called trichomacy, called by some as “normal color vision.”

Here’s a page from my Pigment Dictionary, a book filled with swatches of paint and information about pigments. You can see several premixed greens, and a few solid green pigments on the bottom row.

A little anecdote by way of introduction…

I began a series of color theory paintings in 2018, and things went swimmingly at first. I created work with blue and orange, with cyan and aqua, and things even sailed along with interest when I tackled the challenging combo of blue and yellow. But GREEN. There were a few forays into the green-magenta world, but I soon drew up short dissatisfied. There are so many greens, and they are all very different in their character. It’s hard to describe, but then, that’s why one works it out with pigments instead of words. When I started working with green, I discovered that green is figuratively a wild animal. Previous to working with green, all of those other color harmonies proceeded in a straightforward way and were quite rewarding. However, when I began to work with the colors green and purple, I found they were shockingly complex. This began to raise questions about greens, and I developed a new appreciation for just how many different greens there are.

So, why does green present artists with so many… “opportunities for exploration”?

Green’s Theoretical Mysteries

The practical problems painters face in working with green as a color point to green’s deeper theoretical mysteries, which will by no means be exhaustively described here because the just keep going!  Here’s a few:

• First, I’ve noticed, as you may also have noticed that green can be tinted with almost every color of the rainbow and still read as “green.”  Weird. Is that true for all the colors? Mysterious.

• It’s even stranger that as certain shades of yellow get darker in value we begin to perceive those dark yellows as greens.  Also WEIRD. Does that happen with other colors? Hm. When painting with greens, a color organization system like Munsell or Ostwald can help to sort through it, especially in the darker yellow hues, which are… p.s. … greens.

• Also strange and mysterious is that the painter’s gamut of greens is far more attenuated than the greens we perceive in nature. You can see this if you look at the color gamut of oil paint in the CIE space. Which means that we look out to the world and say, “Ah, yes, gorgeous greens,” and go to paint them… and even if you find 104 of them which you might have pre-tubed and mixed in your paintbox, that will be nothing like what you can see with your eyes… out there… in a field.
  
  I’ll explain this more in depth, but a really bright middle green paint clocks in at about the 5th Munsell value, which is pretty dark. However, let’s say a person is viewing sunlight falling on the lawn. Green grass in sunlight is very colorful— very green if you will— and very bright. This creates some problems since the bright middle green paints hues exist at a luminance level that is not very high. That means for an artist that they are going to have to do some fancy footwork or make some compromises if they’d like to paint that bright green lawn.

• And last of all, there is some philosophical and perceptual lack of agreement concerning green. There is an ongoing color conversation which has been sustained through the ages as to whether green should be considered a primary or secondary color. Green, which is so fundamental to many landscapes, should perhaps be classified as a primary color. Also some arguments from the field of perception and color psychology would favor that idea. This also gets into some interesting anthropological research on how different cultures have made distinctions between colors. The writer Goethe and the NCS (Natural color system) classify green as a primary color. Of course green is a primary in mixing light, but green is not thought of as a primary in paints/subtractive mixing schemas. There is a discussion that crops up from time to time as to whether green should be considered a “psychological primary”, even though as painters, we tend to think of it as a secondary, since artists typically mix yellow and blue to create shades of green.

• And though this is an aside, it is just too cool not to mention. There is a tribe called the Himba, whose members are able to perceive the difference between shades of green that others may not be able to detect. The study of how, why, and where we make differences between different hues is an ongoing area of research in anthropology and psychology.

  So it appears that green is fraught with mystery, controversy, complication, and invites us to explore the topic more deeply.

We have not as yet even touched on the practical quandaries that the color green presents to painters.

Here’s a page from my pigment dictionary showing a range of green pigments and mixes. As you can see, they range from electric green, to olive, to teal.

Green’s Practical Mysteries

Much of the literature that has been written by artists on green predictably comes to us from the landscape artist community, as they are the ones who are typically are the most familiar with the demanding, surprising, and elusive nature of this color, and it is they who task themselves with showing it off to its best effect. While some members of certain art communities might dismiss landscape painting as “too easy,” I have always wondered how many of the naysayers who have written off a landscapes as a genre have actually tried their hand at it. Done before? Yes. But done well? Maybe rarely. What they didn’t tell us in art school is that landscape painting is difficult… it is really difficult to paint a beautiful landscape. Especially— as it turns out— if that landscape contains a predominance of greens.

greens at the art store

Here’s just a few of the immediate reasons why green is tricky on a practical level. If you’re well schooled in this, I expect some head nods, and don’t worry, it gets more complicated later.

complications from pre-mixed greens

There are a number of pre-mixed greens — “Good!,” one thinks to oneself. “I’ll buy this green…” Let’s say it’s one of the more popular greens, Sap Green.

• Ok, so we have our Sap Green. The bad news is that the name gives very little indication of its hue, lightfastness, or its behavior in mixing. Monikers like Sap Green, though ubiquitous through the industry, are names that have little to no standardization.

  1. As the most common and oft-praised painter’s green, Sap Green could contain any number of different pigments, even though a company’s tube says “sap green” on the front.

     1. Winsor and Newton makes their Sap Green from a blend of Phthalo Blue (PB 15) and Isoindolone Yellow (PY110).

     2. However, M Graham makes their Sap Green with Chlorinated Copper Phthalocyanine (PG 7), Azomethine Copper Complex (PY 129), and Amorphous Carbon (PBk 9).

  2. Furthermore, just as an aside, one of those pigments might not turn out to be lightfast. Lack of lightfastness can be a huge problem with green mixes, especially older ones. It’s always a good idea to make sure the pigments in a given green mix are all lightfast. I found some vintage tubes of Winsor and Newton that I had were not lightfast, and thankfully I discovered this before I used them.

• What it means to a painter that paints like “Sap Green” vary so widely in their ingredients, is that premixed greens with different pigments inside of them will behave differently in practice— that is they will behave differently when mixed with other colors on your palette

  In short, with premixed greens, be careful of the ingredients, look for issues with the lightfastness of the yellow component especially, and also be mindful that they can lead to overuse just because they can take a bit of work out of the mixing process. That last point leads them to being a bit unjustly maligned, because they are clearly useful.

single-pigment greens

• To expand the complexity of the palette, there are also several fantastic single pigment paints that are just “green” out of the gate—the Phthalo Greens PG 7 and PG36, Green Earth, chromium oxide, several cobalt based pigments, etc.

• However, many painters complain that Phthalo Greens are too “unrealistic” for painting nature, even though PG 7 and PG 36 are absolutely fantastic, powerful colors. On Bruce’s site, he shows the relation of the high chroma phthalos to the landscape greens, which are less saturated.

• And, to increase the complexity even more, there are also about a zillion combinations of various yellow and blue pigments which could be combined. I’m tempted to do the math here on just how many combinations we’re talking.

• Then there are also surprising, unconventional green mixes to add to our list of permutations, which further the complexity, and add richness to the possibilities. Some of these pigment pairings are yellow and black, or earth tones with blue.

• Last but not least all of these greens can be modified by the other colors on the palette, especially by their opposites— reds and violets.

Things become elaborate very quickly.

As a quick note on Phthalo Green, I would recommend cutting it with yellow. Some complain that Phthalos in general are too powerful, but I would argue that their potency is only a good thing. If you like, make your own mixes of phtalo with other colors and even tube them. If you add phthalo to yellow as a pre-mix, you can introduce it into your greens in small quantities.

Quick Tips for painters on Mixing Greens

Let’s take a flyover view of the landscape of painterly advice on how to mix greens. Here’s a quick roundup with strategies painters tend to use when working with green.  Honestly, I have read a lot of articles on artists working with greens, and so to save you some time, here’s a quick list of the usual tips.  

popular strategies for painting with the color green

1. Mix your own greens from blues and yellows

   • Sounds straightforward, right? There are so many pigments to choose from, that which blues to pair with which yellows to get started can feel open-ended. That quest, while fun and recommended, can be kindof a lot to manage for those starting out or for those already savvy to the way green can overwhelm with possibilities.

   • So, here is my advice: I was introduced to the following palette when I began to paint, and set me on a good track for painting the greens I wanted to create, at least initially. I recommend a variation of the Michael Wilcox method here of “split primaries.” For greens, I recommend using the full cadmium yellow range (a Cadmium yellow light and a Cadmium Yellow medium and/or Deep) mixed with two blues, Phthalo Blue and Ultramarine.

     1. Cadmium Yellow Light

     2. Cad Yellow Medium

     3. Cadmium Yellow Deep

     4. Each of these is then mixed first with Phthalo Blue,

     5. and then separately each one is mixed with Ultramarine Blue.

        You’ll soon get a feel for how to mix high chroma and low chroma greens. The cadmiums are opaque/ semi-opaque, so bear that in mind. Also beware of the insertion of the word “hue” as it means it’s a different mix. The cadmium yellows should all be PY 35 or PY37, and the Phthalo blue is PB 15 or some variation of PB15, and the Ultramarine is PB29

2. Mix greens with pigments you wouldn’t usually think of as tools to mix greens. (Oranges with blues, black with yellow, yellow ochre with blues, mixing with purples, etc.). So instead of yellow and blue, try something like yellow and black. This is a good one because it helps you to level up your greens after you’ve mastered point 1. It’s still essentially a 2-color-mix recommendation though of course mix to your heart’s content.

3. Mix reds in with your greens. Here we level up to the three-color-mix. Now that you know how to mix a stock variety of greens from two colors, add a third with which to modify it, like a touch of crimson, or an earth tone or a cadmium red. This leads us to the next bit of advice,

4. This point is kind of derivative in relation to the previous point, but deserving of its own line because it’s different in approach: use red as your underpainting for a painting full of greens, so the green on top gets mixed in or perhaps the semi-translucency of the green paint will allow some of that red light to reduce the overall impression of hue, value, and chroma. So in other words, this “mixing” might occur through semi-transparency, intentionally missed places were the red toning shows through, or just by good luck.
   
   The next two points of conventional advice are contradictory:
   

5. Throw out your pre-mixed greens

6. Definitely use your pre-mixed greens and modify them.  
   
   This is one we’ve all done (and one which I hoped to spare you from doing first):

7. Mix every single combination possible of yellow and blue and arrange them in a chart that you will never probably use because it is just sort of bewildering. But then you can say that you did it.

8. Craft a complicated and elaborate palette specially engineered for green mixing. 

   And then the wildest and maybe most interesting idea of all which very few oil painters explore:

9. Use glazing to mix greens. Transparency is a bit beyond the scope of this post, but some blues are more transparent or opaque, and the same goes for different yellows. With greens more options isn’t always better, but it is another door through which you can go to find even more options and effects.

If you would like some in-depth guidance, are interested in point 8 on the engineered palette, or are looking for all-around assistance on the technical part, you could do no better than to visit Bruce MacEvoy’s site where he discusses mixing greens. He writes from the standpoint of a watercolorist, though the ideas are transferrable to most other media. Especially interesting are his charts showing the landscape greens in the CIE colorspace.

Bruce MacEvoy does such a great job of describing the various green pigments, yellow pigment candidates, blues, and mixing strategies that I would rather point you toward his site than repeating many of the same things here. Now you have the lay of the land, and my own personal recommendation to get a palette of two yellows and two blues and learn the basics first.

back to ireland’s 40 shades

Perhaps it’s obvious by now how a person could come up with 108 shades of green and only be about halfway through any sort of meaningful tour of the green gamut.

The question of how to apply those shades is the next one I’ll be setting my mind to figuring out. There are some good leads in the research, but the truer test for me will be to see how these shades will work out in practice.