Color Palette Basics: How to Mix and Paint with Watercolor Greens

1. Welcome: Siege, mix, eucalyptus. These are just a few of my favorite greens. In the past year, I've been exploring color mixing and unlocking watercolors' secrets in order to avoid dull and lifeless paintings. Hi there, my name is Audrey and I'm excited to welcome you to my class, color palette basics, how to mix and paint with watercolor greens. I've been teaching on Skillshare since 2017. I'm a top teacher. You may recognize my loose florals, wreaths, and paintings of nature. Through this class, you're going to really get to know your color palette. We'll start with an understanding of color theory. Then we'll discuss why mixing greens is an essential skill as a watercolor artist. Then we'll explore three different ways to mix greens. By the end, you will appreciate the color green in a whole new way as you paint this abstract landscape. This class is for you. If you already have a basic understanding of how to paint with watercolors and you're ready to challenge yourself to think more critically about the colors you use in your paintings. What are you waiting for? Let's get our brushes and palate steady. Start mixing the color green and take the next steps in our watercolor journey together. I'll see you in class. 2. Project Overview: The project for this class, we'll demonstrate an understanding of how to paint greens. The main project will be to paint this abstract landscape. You can include other smaller projects, such as your swatch chart, color mixing practice, and any other nodes or interesting things you might want to share. In the end, I hope you will take your understanding of mixing greens to a whole new level and be able to apply it to all future paintings. Please remember to share your project. From your desktop, head to the projects and resources tab. Then click on the button "Create Project". From there, you can upload a cover image. Write, a project title and description and include additional content like more images, video, links. When you're all done, click "Publish". I can't wait to see your projects. In the next video, let's discuss why you need to learn how to mix greens in watercolor. 3. Why Mix Greens?: You'll hear a lot of watercolor artists say that you shouldn't mix your own greens because the ones that come with your palate are not realistic or organic looking, and I would agree with that statement, especially if the green is more of a bright, almost neon color. I would add just a few more reasons to that main one. Number 1, you could save money while there are convenient screens or ready-made greens that are more natural looking, having to purchase individual tubes could get expensive, and depending on the style of painting or subject matter you paint, you may not end up using all of the paint tube. Number 2, you will have a better understanding of color theory and your paints. Being able to mix on your own gives you the most control over your paints and how you paint with them. You also discover more about what your paints can do and you'll be surprised at how much more you can do with less. Lastly, you will create dynamic paintings. In real life, no green plant is just one color. You're going to see highlights, shadows, mid tones. Each of these tones are slightly different greens and sometimes when you place a green next to another color, it's going to change the overall perceived color. As you will learn more in the next video about color theory, the color green is a secondary color, which means that you have to mix two primary colors to get the color green. But color theory for watercolors and thus mixing greens is a bit more complicated than that. Let's investigate in the next video. 4. Color Theory Basics: In this video, I want to cover two main topics, color theory basics, including the color wheel, and what color bias is. Second, types of watercolor paints and how they can affect color. Color theory is a set of rules that explains what happens when you mix colors. These rules apply to every art form including watercolors. Color theory was originally formed by the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. From there, you can mix primary colors to create secondary colors, the orange, green, and purple. From there, you can mix a primary and a secondary color to create tertiary colors, which are the hyphenated color names. These mixtures of colors are what create the foundation of the color wheel. Let's take a look at the color wheel, you can see that I have primary colors, secondary colors, and tertiary colors are represented. If you were to split it down in the middle like this, you'd get warm colors on the right and cool colors on the left. If you mix all primary colors equally, you would get black. Now the cool thing with watercolors is that you may have noticed that there is more than one type of primary color, meaning that each primary color has a color bias. This also means that no primary color is completely pure. This is what I mean, notice my two reds here. This permanent red has a yellow bias and looks warmer compared to the alizarin crimson that has a blue bias and is considered a cool red. Then goes for the yellow and blue. Each has a different bias towards another primary color. You'll notice that mixing certain primary colors with certain biases will create a wide array of results. In short, if you want bright clean colors, choose colors that share each other's color bias. A cool yellow with a cool blue will create a bright green because they lean towards each other. Or a cool red that leans towards blue and a warm blue that leans towards red, leaning towards each other, is going to create a bright purple. But sometimes the muddy, muted colors are preferred and that's okay. As long as you're not experimenting on the fly, as you're painting, you want to make informed choices when it comes to colors that you're not surprised by what happens on the paper. Now let's discuss the types of watercolor paints and how they can affect the color. Number 1, transparency. Watercolors are so special because of its transparent nature. The more transparent the color is, the brighter it may appear on paper because it's allowing the white color of the paper to shine through. If you find that your colors are too opaque or too dull, it may be due to its transparency. Next, sedimentary or granulating types of watercolors has pigments that are deposited on the top layer of the paper. You can visibly see the pigments. This characteristic is sometimes not preferred because they tend to be less transparent and thus contributing to a less bright watercolor painting. Lastly, staining. Staining watercolors quickly sink into the layers of the paper and basically dye it. These types of paints will create a more opaque effect and it will be difficult to lift. So make sure that you're very careful when you're layering with a staining type of paint. To understand more about your paint's characteristics, please refer to the paint manufacturer. If you bought two paints, the information can be found on the tube's label. If you have pan paints, you can refer to the manufacturer's website and make notes. I highly recommend first starting out with a basic swatch of all of your colors like this. All three of these watercolor types can affect how your green mixture comes out. If you mix a granulating blue with a staining yellow, you will probably get a green that is very opaque. If you mix two transparent colors together, you'll probably get a very bright transparent green color. This knowledge combined with color theory will help you mix greens that are exactly what you need, whether that's a bright transparent green or a muted more opaque green. In the next video, we'll discuss the supplies that you need and start mixing. 5. Supplies: Here are the supplies that you'll need for this class. Watercolor paper at 140 pound or 300 GSM. You can have different sizes depending on what you're doing. I like a large pad like this in case I'm doing a swatch chart, and you can choose a smaller size for your final project. You'll need watercolor brushes in different sizes and shape. I usually like the round brushes but you can also use a flat brush. Whatever will help you mix and paint the appropriate amount for the size of your paper. In general, I really like the round size six or eight. You also need watercolor paints. You can use pan or tube paints, and these are the main colors that I'll be referring to in this class. For the cool yellows, I'll be using either Lemon Yellow PY3 or Permanent Yellow Light, PY155. For the warm yellows, we've got Yellow Ocher, PY42, or Cadmium Yellow Light PY35. For warm blues, I'll be using the Ultramarine blue, PB29 or Indanthrone Blue, PB60. For the cool blues, there is a Cyan, PB15: 3 or Prussian Blue, PB27. The convenience screen that I'll be using is the Phthalo Green, PG7. You can also use other earth colors like Burnt Sienna, PBR7. You'll need a watercolor palette or some large mixing area. A pen or pencil and an eraser. One or two jars of water. some paper towel, and this just spray bottle with water to keep your paints fresh. Go ahead and gather your supplies and let's start mixing. 6. Let's Mix Greens: In this video, we will explore three different ways to make screens. Now that we've discussed color theory, you understand that depending on the color bias of your primary color, you're going to get a variety of greens. So let's dive deeper into that understanding. In general, if you want to mix a more muted green, you want to mix a warm yellow, which leans towards red, and a cool blue which leans towards yellow. The color bias leans away from each other. A great option for a warm yellow or cadmium yellow light PY35, or yellow ocher PY42. Some good options for a cool blue are cyan TB 15:3 or Prussian blue PB 27. If you want to mix a bright green, you want to mix a warm yellow and a warm blue or a cool yellow and cool blue. Here are some good options for cool yellows. Lemon yellow PY 3, or a permanent yellow light PY 155, and some good options for a warm blue are ultramarine blue PB 29 and Indanthrone blue PB 60. The third way is if you want to explore mixing with your convenience screens, try and mixing it with a modifying color. One of the most popular convenience screens is phthalo green PG 7. It's a really bright color, not my cup of tea, but with the right modifying color, it can be really beautiful. Remember that when you're choosing a modifying color, try to choose colors that are single pigment to reduce the risk of mixing too many pigments together. In general, I like to use warmer earth tones to neutralize and darken the results in green. Here are some options to get you started. Permanent orange, PO 71, cadmium red light, PO 20, burn Sienna, PPR seven, and English red light, PR 101. You'll find that if you use cool colors like blues and cool reds, pinks and purples with the convenience screen, you'll get a bluish green, even a warm blue like ultramarine blue will still result in a bright blue-green/teal color. Some great options for reds, pinks and purples are genuine rose PV 19 and dioxazine violet PV 23. As part of your project, create some swatch chart like this. It doesn't have to be fancy at all. You can do simple circles like I did, or create a larger chart like this. What's most important is that you're showing a variety of greens and observing what happens when you mix certain colors. Pause the class here. If you need to spend more time getting to know your paints, don't be afraid to deep dive and make notes as you go along. This whole process should not only be educational but fun too. Then when you're ready, go on to the next video and we'll paint our final project together. 7. Final Project: For your project, you'll be painting an abstract landscape using a variety of greens. I want you to mix two different greens, a warm muted green and a cool green. We will use these colors and their various values to paint this. Make sure to share in your project which pigments you mix so that we can expand our library of color mixtures. Let's begin. This is the final project that we're going to create. When you paint a landscape, in general, you want cooler greens to be in the background. Cool toned colors tend to have a receding effect and then warmer, brighter colors tend to have a protruding effect. You want those in your foreground. The first thing I want to do is choose my warm green color and the cool green color and then we'll use various values of it to create the depth in our landscape. Here's my color swatch chart that I've made a while ago. I'm really going to be looking at the middle column because this would be about 50 percent of both the yellow and the blues. I'm liking this olive color right here. That's a mixture of cadmium yellow light and indanthrone blue. So like that. As for my cooler green, I'm liking this one up here with the permanent yellow light and indanthrone blue. I think maybe using this as my main blue base and mixing it with either permanent yellow light or the cadmium yellow light will be the way to go. Let's do that. I have my watercolor paints up here, but I'm going to use this palette to mix. First, use your spray bottle to wake up your paints. This is my PB60, the indanthrone blue. I'm just going to pick up a good amount and place it on both sides of my palette here. This is a pretty small palette, but that's okay. My cadmium yellow light is this one over here. It's going to grab a little bit here. [NOISE] A permanent yellow light is over here. It's going to bring in a little bit at a time to mix in here. Look at that, already a really beautiful green. [NOISE] Really nice, cool green as well. Looking really nice. I have a smaller size sheet then my Example 1, and that's okay. You can use whatever size you want, but I'm going to use my Size 6 brush. I'm actually going to use some washi tape to keep my paper down and create that really nice crisp border. Try to keep your brushstrokes really loose and don't feel too much pressure to try to make it look perfect. I'm going to start with a darker value towards the front. As you create each stroke, tried to leave a little bit of white space in-between each stroke. Mix up more of the paint as you need to. Just notice how I have different values. These are pretty dark values. These are lighter values. Then as I move upward towards the middle, I'm going to pick up my warm value, I'm going to pick up just a little bit of that cool green and then start transitioning more into that one. Again, wash out your brush a little bit to create different values, and then we'll leave that to dry a little bit. Then once that's done, we'll add in some line details. I decided to grab [NOISE] another piece of paper and do it again. Now, because I didn't like the first one is just that I split up my paper into two cuts and so I figured [NOISE] mine as well make two. Why not? [LAUGHTER] Again, mix up some more of your paint if you need to. I'm just going to set this one aside and bring the other one back. There it is. I'm going to use a slightly smaller brush, a size three or smaller, and I'm going to use a dryer brush. I'm tapping my brush so I'm blotting my brush on the paper towel and I want the darkest value possible. I'm just going to start outlining the shape of the hills. These lines can be as precise or not precise as you want them to be. They can be spaced out, they can be closer together. Just go with the flow, like don't think too much about it. Instead, just get lost in the act of creating. Once you're all done, now you can peel off the tape. You can hold your painting up far away, and you can clearly see because we use warmer colors here in the foreground, they seem to be coming towards you. Then the cooler lighter values in the back make it seem like it's going further in the background. Let's do the same with the other landscape. This time I think I want my line details to have darker values. I'm going to add just a little bit of Payne's gray into the mixture and add just the cooler yellow and blot my brush that it's pretty dry, and do the same thing. Again, just get lost in what you're doing. Don't think too much about making the lines perfect. Let's do the tape peel for this one. There you go. This is your final project. Great job. 8. Closing Thoughts: Congratulations on finishing this course. I'm so glad you made it to the end, and I can't wait to see your work and hear from you. What was the favorite green that you mix? What surprises did you find along the way? Think about this as you finish this class and move onto future paintings. If you liked color mixing and want to learn more, check out my other class on how to mix watercolor, Grace. Please remember to share your project. You can also share your work on social media. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Please tag me @AudreyRaDesign and use the hashtag paint with Audrey. Will you also take a moment to review the class. It will help me improve and continue to bring you quality classes. Thank you so much for taking this class, and I'll see you in the next one.