Green is a colour that can easily overpower a painting and many painters find mixing greens a challenge. But landscape painters, in particular, need to use a lot of green. Many artists find that the solution is to ensure you use a wide variety of greens. The examples of mixing greens here are done with oil colour but the method applies equally to other mediums. This two-step method for colour mixing works to mix any colour, not just green.
Start with a Base Middle Green
One common way to mix greens is to start with a base middle green and modify it with two other colours to achieve a spectrum of greens. The base middle green can be a tube of a single pigment green, a tube of a premixed-for-convenience green or your favourite mixture of two paints to make an average middle green.
Middle Green made with 3 parts Jackson’s Artist Oil Lemon Yellow and 1 part Jackson’s Artist Oil Phthalo Blue.
More Base Middle Greens:
(Click the image for a larger, clearer version.)
Modify the Base Middle Green
(Click the image for a larger, clearer version.)
Mixing a variety of greens from this base middle green then consists of adjustments to the three characteristics of this base colour:
- light/dark (add yellow to lighten or blue/violet to darken),
- warm/cool (add yellow/orange/red/brown to warm or blue or a bluer green like viridian to cool),
- saturated/subdued (add brighter green to brighten or contrasting red to dull).
Beginning with the base middle green paint, modify the hue and temperature with a yellow (to make a lighter, warmer, more yellow green) or blue (to make a darker, cooler, more bluish-green) paint.
Second, modify the saturation with any warming or neutralising colour from orange to violet (it usually takes a very small amount to start dulling or desaturating the colour). In the samples I used a smidge of crimson. To increase the saturation you can add a brighter green, like Permanent Green.
With this method you can mix a spectrum of green shades to provide the necessary variety: warm greens, cool greens, light greens, dark greens, bright greens, and dull grey greens.
A wide variety of warm, cool, light, dark, saturated and dull greens, all modified from a middle green.
All the paints used in the following colour mixing wheels are Jackson’s Artist Oils, except Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin Crimson which are Jackson’s Professional Oils.
Modifying a Middle Green – Phthalo Green
Centre: Middle Green – Phthalo Green, thick and also thinned with a solvent
1st ring: four warm colours and four cool colours
2nd ring: a mix of the middle green and the modifying colour
Outer ring: the mixture dulled with a small amount of Alizarin Crimson
Modifying a Middle Green – Lemon Yellow and Phthalo Blue
Centre: Middle Green mixed from three parts Lemon Yellow and one part Phthalo Blue
1st ring: four warm colours and four cool colours
2nd ring: a mix of the middle green and the modifying colour
Outer ring: the mixture dulled with a small amount of Alizarin Crimson
You can find products related to oil painting, such as brushes, mediums, surfaces, and paints, in our oil painting department.
Thank you for this!!! I have the hardest time trying to get the color
I want. Really appreciated this information. Thank you again.
Glad to be of help!
Thanks so much for this valuable and sensible information!
Thanks for reading!
It took me many years to get the greens I wanted.
Hookers Green is a very good base and it’s hue can be
modified with various additions; yellow ochre, raw
umber, or a touch of lamp black will give a nice natural
green. I now mainly mix my greens using ultramarine
blue with cadmium yellow as the base and then
adjusting the hue with yellow ochre, raw umber to get
a yellowish/brownish natural looking green. I am not
keen on blueish hues, even though they do occur in
nature, I find them unpleasing. Green is indeed a
difficult colour to use effectively !
Hi Mark
Thanks for your tips on green! I like Ultramarine as a natural looking green mixer, too!
What a great and helpful article on
mixing greens. Would these
suggestions apply to watercolours
also as that’s what I use..I’m a bit
of a beginner? Thank you in advance.
Hi Bessie
Yes the principles would be the same. Start with a middle green and modify the temperature/hue with a yellow or a blue and then the saturation with a small amount of a red.
I tried painting a sunset over water. The
sky was blue and when I put in the
yellow and orange it turned green! What
can I do or add to get rid of the green
sky?
Hi Bill
It sounds like you are working in watercolour. This means you need to work in a way that works best for watercolours.
In watercolour most colours are transparent so you can see through them to the colour underneath and this mixes the colours in the eye, like layering sheets of stained glass. So to add sunset colours in the sky you would need to leave a white area for the colours because you want the white to light up your oranges from behind. In other mediums like oil paint, you can just paint on top of the blue with an opaque orange mixture and it will cover it. Layering in watercolour works beautifully in many cases but is usually done to darken an area or add more of a similar colour, to build up richness, or to make a green from layering blue and orange, which will give a different look than if you mixed the blue and orange. But it is not usually done to change to a completely different colour.
The second thing to remember is that watercolour is re-soluble with water. Some brands are more adhered to the paper than others, and some colours are more staining than others, but when you run a wet brush over a dry area of the painting you will usually re-activate the paint and if you don’t want to do that you need to be quite gentle when glazing a new wet colour over a dry colour.
If you have a green sky and wish to try to rescue the painting, the best advice I can give you is to try to remove all the sky paint and start over. You can brush on clean water and let it sit until the paint is softened and scrub at it with a brush very gently and blot it off with a tissue. Then when you are ready to paint the sky again keep the blue and orange parts separate by perhaps painting one and letting it dry and then painting the other. They can’t run into each other and mix that way and you will only get green if your paint strays over the other colour. I don’t know how everyone else would do it but I would paint the oranges first, get the setting sun looking correct, leaving gaps for some blue sky if needed, then let it dry. Then go back and do the blue later as it will be simpler, a gradient perhaps, from light cool blue at the horizon to a warmer deeper blue at the top. Another approach would be to do your sky wash and then blot out the area for the sunset colours with a tissue before the blue has dried. But look carefully at the sky, at sunset it isn’t usually the same blue all the way across, it gets much lighter and darker in places.
I hope that has helped some with your issue.
We stock some great books on watercolour painting and on colour theory, if you’d like to have a look.
one of the nicest demonstrations of a
subject I have seen – at 83 I have problems
grasping and retaining instruction, but this
is super well done – thank you Julie
Hi Tom
That’s great to hear!
My main goal in every article is to impart the information clearly, so it is understandable and the reader takes away a new clear understanding.
I am glad you found it useful! Thanks for taking the time to let me know.
A really interesting and useful article on
the dreaded greens! I’ve printed it off for
future reference.
Just a note on Jackson’s Artist oil paints
– I’ve been using them for some time
now and found them excellent in all
respects, and at a very affordable price.
I’ve just written a 4-page article in the
November edition of The Artist magazine
which is out now, extolling their virtues
along with some of my demonstrations
using these paints.
Glad to hear that it’s of use, Alan! We really love your review of our Artist Oils, many thanks for that!