Mixing Greens For Watercolor Landscape Paintings

by Ellene

In my art library, I have a book “Blue and Green Don’t Make Yellow” written by Michael Wilcox, this is my reference for mixing greens.

mixing greens

Mixing greens for watercolor landscape paintings is fun and exciting,

and if you have been following along in our color study, you know by now how important the color of green is. It’s not always easy to combine the right colors to make the perfect shade of green we need. Exciting because in nature there are so many different greens and to make

our watercolor landscape paintings look somewhat real, we must learn to mix greens.

The focus in this post is mixing greens on your palette and watercolor paper to create a perfect color for your painting.

My students know that I like to chart colors used in a painting. I recommend that you do the same and I’m including colors to make green. To achieve the best results from this post, please take a sheet of watercolor paper and lay out the following colors…

Lemon Yellow
Sap Green
Cadmium Yellow Light
Cerulean Blue
Thalo Blue
Thalo Green

All these pigments when mixed together give a different shade of green. For example
Lemon Yellow leans toward green and Sap Green leans toward yellow, so when you mix these two colors you have a beautiful green.

Cadmiun Yellow Light, an orange-yellow mixes with Cerulean Blue, a green-blue of mid-intensity is created. This color is neither bright or dull.

Lemon Yellow and Thalo Blue mix to a range of clear, very bright greens. These colors create a semi-transparent yellow green to a very transparent blue green.

Thalo Green and Lemon Yellow mixes to a very strong intensity.

As you use these pigments and paint them on your watercolor paper, you will be so excited to see the beautiful colors these colors create when glazed one color over the other.

How are these colors used once they are mixed? By using an Analogous color scheme. Take the color wheel and begin with the yellow block, go right and include at least the 3 colors beside yellow, which are Yellow-Green, Green, and Blue-Green.

As you go around the color wheel find other colors that can be used in a painting in the same way. Continue turning and look for harmonious color blocks that could be used to describe your feelings as the picture is painted. Using this method of mixing greens for your painting will give a harmonious color scheme.

A word of caution, when mixing greens,

go slowly, if too many colors are introduced they begin to over take the compliments in your paintings.

Mixing greens from your own palette brings a sparkle to your work and speaks volumes about you as an artist.

Ellene
Ellene Breedlove Davis

http://ElleneBreedloveDavis.com
http://Twitter.com/ElleneBDavis
http://Facebook.com/ElleneBreedloveDavisWatercolorArtist

yellowcreekart@gmail.com

Mixing Greens For Watercolor Landscape Paintings

Tags: mixing greens, watercolor landscape paintings

Posted in color | No Comments »

Use an Artist Day Planner – Achieve Your Goals Faster

by Ellene

Day Planner

Using the artist day planner and achieving your artistic goals

faster, go hand in hand. What better time than the new year to begin using a day planner.

Personally, I’ve tried the new, wonderful electronic day planners and haven’t had good results. The thought and procedure to keep appointments, goals and personal information in the electronic devices so common today just doesn’t seem to flow for me. Does this seem true to you also? Working in the corporate world, a large desk calendar was used to keep track of appointments, meetings and vacation/sick leave time.

Now that I’m working from home, my calender has been reduced to day planner size.

Many years ago I received a brown, leather day runner and I’ve always used it to keep appointments, etc. Choosing the type day planner page is important. There are many different types but my personal choice is 3 days on one side and 4 days on the other side. This type planner is flat and the whole week is on the open page. Also included in this type day planner are calendars of the present month, next month and yearly.

Valuable also is the personal pages where information from sizes to grocery lists can be at your fingertips.

This type day planner is all you need to become more efficient,

keep your goals on track and achieve the organized life you want to live.

The paper day planner is probably the oldest way of planning, but it is the fastest, easiest way to keep your day, week, month or year moving in an orderly fashion!

I would love comments about your favorite way to keep your artistic day running smoothly.

Did you notice the button in the top right corner? Please leave your name and email address and you will receive the MP3 that talks about goal setting. Guideing you to an e-book, written by an artist for artists, an easy and complete way to set and keep your goals.

Ellene
Ellene Breedlove Davis

yellowcreekart@gmail.com

http://ElleneBreedloveDavis.com
http://Twitter.com/ElleneBDavis
http://Facebook.com/ElleneBreedloveDavisWatercolorArtist

Use an Artist Day Planner – How to Achieve Your Goals Faster

Tags: artist day planner, time management

Posted in Be Prepared | 7 Comments »

Drawing Inspiration for Paintings Through the Color Wheel

by Ellene

Drawing inspiration for paintings

through the color wheel is just a matter of understanding information given on the wheel itself.

In this series of information found on the Color Wheel, I’ve chosen the color blue to follow.

Inspirations for Paintings

On the side that reads “Artist’s Color Wheel” start with…
Red, which is a primary color, when blue is added the color purple is created.
Roll the wheel around to the next primary color, place the blue primary color section over it and we’ve created Green.
Naturally when the blue is placed over the blue section it remains blue.

Now let’s take the blue color and match it with…
the secondary colors, Orange, Green and Violet. When Blue is painted with Orange it makes a dull dark green, suitable for a dark color in the landscape.
Placing the Blue section over Green makes another landscape color of a bright green. This is how the Tertiary or Intermediate colors are formed.

I think you are beginning to see how finding these colors offer an

inspiration for paintings

Explore just a little bit more and discover…
how the blue used with Tertiary colors adds another deminsion to your color palette. Adding Blue to Yellow-Green, a cool color, will give a soft yellow-green, which would be good for highlights in a landscape painting.
Add Blue to the Blue-Green and a beautiful Teal color is found. Blue-Violet doesn’t change so let’s go on to
Red-Violet – and the color become much more purple and intense.

Usually in watercolor painting we prefer not to use the color black, which is all colors mixed together and a lifeless, useless color. It is possible to mix a dark color without using black. See the example above of Red-Orange-Blue. This color is very dark and intense, thus making a dark color without using Black.

Do you know the warm and cool colors and how to find them on the color wheel? If color is our

inspiration for paintings

then we must know the aggressive and receding colors as they are found on the color wheel.

Reds, Oranges and Yellows are the aggressive (warm) colors…otherwise known as Sun colors. Colors such as these cool colors are Greens, Blues and Violets are sky and water colors. These colors take the eye away from your subject whereas the warm colors make your subject seem closer. In landscapes or when painting backgrounds the cool colors are a good choice. Remember to make them cooler and more gray so that you have good arieal perspective in your painting.

The warm colors are used for objects closer to the viewer. They also have much more detail and are painted with a more saturated color.

Is your goal for the coming year to learn more about drawing inspiration for paintings from the color wheel?

Read the “Importance of Color – Emotional and Spiritual” at and htpp://bit.ly/sep0Gg learn how these suggestions will help you show more emotion by setting the mood in your paintings. This post will also offer inspiration for paintings as colors are selected.

Picture of the Color Wheel used from Jerry’s Artarama.

Ellene

http://ElleneBreedloveDavis.com
http://Twitter.com/ElleneBDavis
http://Facebook.com/ElleneBreedloveDavisWatercolorArtist

Drawing Inspiration for Paintings Through the Color Wheel