Artists is it Green or Blue-Green?

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Artists is it Green or Blue-Green?

In nearly every workshop I teach at least one student will confuse green and blue-green. Phthalo Green and Viridian Green are common and made by most all paint manufacturers, so students bring it thinking that if it says '“green” on the tube they can use it for green.

However, that isn’t true. The color green covers a spectrum between blue-green and yellow-green. Each of the three greens on the color wheel (green, blue-green, yellow-green) has a different complement, and have different placements in color combinations like triads. A triad of green, violet and orange is very different from one that has blue-green, red-violet and yellow-orange. If you use the wrong green in the combos, the colors won’t hum together. It will be like a sour note in a music composition - it just won’t fit in properly.

It’s easy to make a green from a blue-green - all you do is add a cool yellow. You don’t want to add a warm yellow because warm yellow contains red, which is the complement of green. The red in the warm yellow will cancel much of the green and create a muted, much less intense green. Cool yellow has green already in it -that’s what makes it cool - so it’s perfect to use to make green.

In the example, I am mixing Viridian Green Hue with Benzimidazolone Yellow Light, both from Golden Artist Colors. Benz yellow light is a cool yellow with a good amount of green in it (that’s what makes cool yellow cool). You can see that the yellow turns it into a useable middle green rather quickly. If the intensity of the green is too much, just add a small amount of warm red to it to reduce the intensity.

I hope this video was helpful for you. Please let me know if there are questions.

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David

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