Ready-made (or convenience) Greens

Wow! We discussed all kinds of things today.

First item of business was to create a background for next week's lesson. We got the paper wet on both sides and put it on a board or piece of plexiglas. No need for tape.....it stays on its own if wet enough.

Then we mixed 3 colors of choice and let them run together, turning the board at angles to keep the paint flowing. We're looking for all SOFT edges and a nice blend of colors....no hard edges and no splotchy looking spots in the background. Just a soft, light to medium value of colors. While wet, use a tissue to blot out some white spots where your center of interest might be.

Leave this to dry overnight. 

NEXT ON THE LIST: seeing what your convenience greens can do for you.

Point one: I have probably 15 different tubes of green, which I rarely ever use. I have them mostly because they were recommended for one workshop or another. 

But a common thing for painters to do is use too many different greens in your painting, and end up with colors that seem to clash. They lack color harmony. So here is one thing you can do.

Start with a small square in the center of a scrap piece of paper. Fill it in with one of your convenience greens, like sap. To the left add hansa yellow (or a light lemony yellow). To the right add a blue, such as ultramarine. Directly below add a red, like alizarin. Directly above add a warm yellow, such as quin gold. On the bottom left corner the green is added to orange. On the bottom right violet is added. Top left is burnt umber and top right is neutral tint (or paynes gray). 

Below is a grid I started with chromium green oxide.

chromium green oxide plus hansa yellow

chromium green oxide with all the other colors added in respective boxes

A sheet with five different greens, using the same colors in the same places.

Top left is pthalo green blue shade; top middle is permanent green.

Bottom left is sap; middle is serpentine; right is hookers green.  

Just by looking at each grouping, you can see that some of those colors do not look good with colors outside that group. But you can create so many shades of green with just one, and they all work together in harmony. 

So if you really want to use a convenience green, use other colors with it to create other tones of green for shade or to make a green look like it's in the light. 

Part 3 was to make realistic looking leaves. Your painting might look great, but then, instead of taking as much time on the leaves as you did with other parts of the picture, it looks odd....almost as if you used two different styles. Even with "loose" paintings, you want it to be believable, not just slapped on randomly.

So here are a few tips on leaf making.

5-minute video on leaves with veins

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W8k8fyZVtk

Angela Fehr shows 13-minutes of 3 types leaves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyJHmdrzpl8

I do mine a bit differently. Especially rose leaves and stems, which nearly always have reds in them.

I usually start with painting the leaf with a yellow (Hansa light) or yellow green.(Hansa + sap) If there is red in the veins or tips, I paint those in either before or after a basic glaze of yellow/green.

Rose leaves: on left, underpainted with red tips and center vein (use very small brush);

middle leaf underpainted yellow/green; right leaf underpainted with yellow.

After that is dry, I negative paint around the veins with a darker green. (a medium shade, just darker than that yellow green). Here I used sap green, since we're discussing convenience greens. 

Adding reds to the tips of middle and right leaves after the second glaze.

Adding blue (pthalo) to the sap to darken. Also adding reds and blue to the stem.

I look for bumps and shadows, and paint those in a bit darker. 

When all is dry, I glaze over the leaf either with cerulean or just with water to take some of the hardness out of the lines. Some hilight might need to be lifted.

Glazing over the entire leaf to soften edges and blending the veins into the leaves.