Get to Grips with Green!

If you have ever struggled to mix greens for your landscape paintings, you are not alone! In my new Paddy Field Landscape project we are looking at an almost totally green landscape, so you will have plenty of opportunity to get to grips with this somewhat elusive and often frustrating colour.

For a lot of people, the colour green can be tricky, as often, ready-made greens are not suitable to use as a standalone colour. So if your ready mixed greens are not useful, then you either have to mix your own using blue and yellow or add a colour to one of your ready made greens. This is where you can unintentionally end up mixing dull, lifeless, muddy greens.

A good place to start is to consider the Hue (colour bias) you would like to achieve. Is it cool or warm? A warm green will often have a bias towards yellow and a cool green will have a bias towards blue. Knowing this, will help you start to make good choices. Remember that warm and cool colours are all relative ~ it depends on what you are comparing them to!

It will also help if you consider your colour Value (light/darkness). To achieve lighter, pale, washed out greens you will need to add more water in the mix. Stronger, bolder colour will need more paint in the mix.

Finally, you might consider the Chroma (brightness/intensity) of your colour. For brightness you will need to select and mix vibrant colours (which are often the cooler colours) ~ transparency of colour will help with this too. For duller, muted greens you need to make them earthier (which are often warmer colours).

If you look at a woodland in full leaf or a spring/summer landscape ~ look closely and you will discover an unlimited palette of greens ~ so no wonder it's hard to know where to start! Remember, when trying to describe a landscape you need to think about the overall feel you want to achieve in the end painting. Is it warm, cold, hot, sunny, cloudy, dusty, lush, tropical, fresh and vibrant? Often, the type of landscape you have chosen to paint will dictate what types of greens you use.

Depending on where you live in the world the types of green that are reflected back at you will be different. Across the world plants and trees have adapted their size, leaf shape and colours to suit their native climate. This helps them to make the most of the sunlight (which feeds them through their leaves) ~ helping them to store enough energy to protect themselves from harsh weather conditions, whether it's hot, cold, wet or dry.

In our project we are looking at the beautiful lush green paddy fields of Vietnam. These fields are often found on hilly terrain where the land has been terraced and cultivated for rice production. In a country where 80% of the landscape is covered with hilly and mountain terrain, this is perhaps the perfect solution to arable farming.

To begin with, we will first mask the retaining walls of the terraces using masking fluid. Then we will add a background wet into wet using a mix of green hues. We will add beautiful, lush greens to the fields using yellow to add brightness and blue to create deep greens.

For the areas of forest and foliage you will use both your brush and a natural sponge to create texture using a range of greens thinking about contrasting edges.

During this project we will also consider how to create the illusion of distance in our landscape and work using washed out blue/green hues in the background and stronger, brighter, warmer colours in the foreground.

To find out a little more about this project, take a look at the short video below:

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/d79f8e_e58c581a31494a4b947f64a25953155a/720p/mp4/file.mp4

I hope you enjoy this project and by the end of it you will be able to mix green with more confidence and apply the key principles to your next landscape painting!

Happy Painting!