Mixing Greens in Oil Colour

Green is a colour that can easily overpower a painting. 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.

Mixing Greens

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.

A wide variety of warm, cool, light, dark, saturated and dull greens, all modified from a middle green. All the paints used in this image are Jackson’s Artist Oils and Jackson’s Professional Oils.

Start with a Base Middle Green

Middle green made with 3 parts Jackson’s Artist Oil Lemon Yellow and 1 part Jackson’s Artist Oil Phthalo Blue.

Modify the Base Middle Green

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 a base middle green paint, first modify the hue and temperature with a yellow or blue paint and then modify the saturation with any warming or neutralising colour from orange to violet.
With this method you can mix a spectrum of greens shades to provide the necessary variety: warm greens, cool greens, light greens, dark greens, bright greens, dull grey greens.

Click the Colour Wheel images to enlarge

All the paints used in the 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.

Modifying a Middle Green – made of Lemon Yellow and Phthalo Blue

The Jackson’s Oils used in the samples

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