Picking my Greens

Sunday, August 23, 2009

I went to the Asian Open-Air Market this morning and enjoyed seeing all the lovely greens displayed so artfully. It got me thinking about one of the most daunting tasks in watercolor, at least to me: foliage in landscapes and vegetables. They are so beautiful with green, but so hard to paint. One thought led to another and I remembered a "Green Exercise" taught by watercolor artist Jan Hart. You can read it at http://www.janhart.com/HartNews/hatrnews04/hartnewso4issue2.html

(Note: I've had trouble getting the link above to work, so you can go to www.janhart.com and work your way through her menus to find her newsletters. The one I refer to is in volume 4, issue 2.)

Jan explores the wide varieties of greens by mixing just about every color of yellow with every color of blue in her palette. I didn't have all the same varieties of yellow and blue that she had, but I used what was on hand and came up with the chart pictured above. My favorite blues were Manganese Blue and Phthalo Turquoise mixed with almost any yellow in the chart. The greener blues worked best. The redder blues might work better if played with a bit, but on the chart they didn't look very green to me.

I have to admit that I also like some of the premixed greens available. My favorites are Winsor-Newton's Sap Green, Skip's Green (a phthalo yellow green by Cheap Joes), and Winsor-Newton's Green-Gold.

Now maybe, just maybe I'll get brave enough to paint a bunch of squash (I think they are "bitter melon" ) like the ones pictured below: