I won't have time or energy for it this month - it is going to start out very busy for me next week so...what about working with greens? Doesn't May make you think of greens. And if you're like me, you may be afraid of greens - you don't know what to do with them, how to mix them well, etc.
So I'm calling this
Every Green in May
and I'm going to put down a nice layer of a green, put down the information about it from the manufacturer and then mix it with something else and see what I get. By the end of the month, I may be past my fear enough to actually paint something in greens - a landscape? Perhaps...we'll see :)
First off:
1. Sap Green
(made by Daniel Smith - all my pigments except a rare few are by Daniel Smith)
DS says this pigment is a mix of
Quinacridone Deep Gold (PO 49) and Phthalo Gree (PG 7)
It has Excellent Lightfast quality, Transparent pigment.
It is Medium Staining and it Granulates in a wash.
In a light, water-filled wash it is clean and pure looking. When you bring it to the paper much darker and fuller strength, you can see the granulation - you could let it do it's think and create trees or shrubs from that process alone. I think it's time to put it back in my palette. I wonder what it will mix well with - is it too pretty alone?
2. Phthalo Turquoise (by Daniel Smith)
DS says this is a mix of Phthalo Blue (PB 15) and Phthalo Green (PG 36)
It is an Excellent Lightfast, Transparent pigment mix.
It's very Staining (be careful for blue-green fingers and clothes), and not Granulating at all.
It definitely is too pretty and much to strong to go at it with a lot of pigment in the brush, but what a gorgeous sweep of blue-green it makes when well wetted down! Could you imagine the northern lights or a cascade forest in this color? Since it's staining and not granulating, you could use this as an underlayer before putting on other colors and it won't lift off the paper when glazing and it would be nice and smooth.
The bottom slice of the photo inserted is a mix of the two - one coming from one end of the sheet and the other coming from the opposite end of the sheet and meeting in the middle just to see what they'd look like. Not bad - seems to take away the candy-like intensity of the phthalo turquoise and settles the golden green of the sap, too.
So I've begun Every Green in May with 2 nice colors. What do you think? Might you use them? I can hear foghorns when viewing the Phthalo Turquoise...maybe a Washington state or Oregon...or British Columbia scene in the making with this one?
Two more greens next time...
3 comments:
Oh yay! Greens are bedeviling! I have tubes and tubes of them, but my goal is to include only two--three, tops--on my palette.
I was introduced to thalo turquoise in a Jan Hart workshop a year ago and love it--it mixes well with everything, and is dark (which I need!).
Sap green is one of my standbys; It's useful for many of the desert greens I attempt to paint.
I have a tube of Thalo Turquoise and although it's an appealing color, I haven't used it except for a couple of times.
Most of my colors are also from Daniel Smith. He has an attractive catalog, and I always look for a new color when the catalog arrives.
Yes, greens can give you fits for some reason so I'm learning as I go which ones I want to keep - if any - of the tube greens. Brent, your greens are always so fresh and bright and you get a good dark, intense green, too. We could learn a lot from you!
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