More on Greens

The recent post on mixing greens made me think about the subject in more depth and I decided to make further swatches of greens using Phthalocyanine Greens PG7 Blue Shade and PG36 Yellow Shade. This is one approach recommended in that small amounts are added to other colours like Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber, really by trial and error. All the Phthalocyanines are very strong staining pigments and have to be used with caution as they are very powerful. Most makers call either shade Phthalo Green, in the case of Maimeri Cupric Green, Winsor & Newton Winsor Green Blue Shade (PG7) and Yellow Shade (PG36). You really need to check either the manufacturers pigment chart or the tube itself to see what you are buying.  They also appear in a wide range of mixed convenience greens.

In these swatches the greens on the left hand side are based on the addition of PG7 Blue Shade which produces darker values than the Yellow shade. The right hand swatches are of the yellow shade. Some of the swatches seem to go against this but is probably down to my hit and miss procedure when adding variable amounts of the green colour. The colours are plainly marked if you click on the photograph and enlarge. 

For these swatches I mixed on the palette, rather than the paper, putting down the selected colour first than adding small amounts of Phalo Green. This is due to the power of these pigments which have to be handled with care.  

Once again there are some interesting shades and  many other colours could be brought into the equation as this is a limited selection. As a general comment I would say that the mixtures with Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, Burnt Umber and Raw Umber make the more natural looking shades, certainly in UK terms where our greens tend to be more subdued for much of the year. 

One of the comments made by Rembrandt van Rijn recommended using Cobalt Turquoise Light, specifically that by Winsor & Newton, which he said makes a wide range of interesting and evocative greens carefully added to some other colours. This is Cobalt Titanate Green Pigment PG50 and there seems to be a wide variation in the shades available,which vary from middle green to turquoise. According to Handprint the same colour index name refers to a range of widely differing hues depending on the admixture with metals aluminium, nickel or zinc. Bruce McEvoy also says that the various shades are amongst his favourite colours. I previously bought  Cobalt Green Light made by Maimeri and wasn't much impressed  and recently Cobalt Teal Blue from Daniel Smith, very different shades. On order is a small tube of the W & N Cobalt Turquoise Light so I shall give them all a try and publish the results in due course.