I was literally just out on a deep woods nature hike. I painted, sketched and photographed so many beautiful bright green colors today. As well as some amazing wild flowers.

Thank you sooo much for this video!! I am still very much a beginner, and learning how experiment with colors this way is probably one of the most useful things I’ve seen. And the way you explain it makes everything makes so much sense. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge! It truly means a lot.

Great explanation of how to think of colors "leaning", and of how to realize that, while lovely, most of the colors straight from the tube don't actually match what we see in nature. I'm practicing both training my eye to notice those subtleties and to know how to mix them. Enjoy your time outside this season! Thanks for the timely video. 🐟

Wow! What great information and you presented it in a way that makes perfect sense! As always Steve, thank you so much!

I recently started using a Schmincke "Special Edition"set that includes a Perylene green. At first I was not that thrilled with the color. But then I realized how great it was to mute the brighter greens, such as the May green that's also in the palette. It's described on Jackson's site as "Extremely dark black-green. Ideal shadow colour, especially for landscape painting."

@BrokenAnguissette

2 жыл бұрын

Perylene green can also make the most wonderfully inku blacks! Perylene green + Dioxazine purple is my must favorite black combo 💚💜🖤

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, excellent neutralizer. Olive green is a good one too. So many possibilities.

Hi Steve I haven't been here for awhile! Glad to be back! Loved this!

Wow that’s a huge amount of spring greens to choose from. I have got a few of those colors in my palette colors (I have more Winsor & Newton). Definitely you have given me some great ideas for trying to mix up some spring greens with my own colors. Gorgeous looking tree 🌳! Thanks for sharing this wonderful video!

The time goes by too fast when I'm watching your videos. I'm seeing new possibilities in my pallet now! Great video. Thank you.

The Sennelier counterpart to Azo Green is called Brown Green (PY129). You wouldn't think it by the name, but it is a golden green.

You mentioned you were using hot press trying to make the colors more vibrant so we could see them better on camera. I appreciate this, and have a suggestion that might help even more. I have noticed you tend to paint very small swatches, and remain rather zoomed out. I would love it if you would paint bigger swatches, and/or zoom in the camera! Just like when paint looks a different color on a small color chip than on the walls of a room, a bigger swatch gives our eyes *more color information.* I find when people adjust their camera to zoom in on the area they're painting, it seems to help a lot. (Edit: you actually did this at one point in the video and it really helped!)

@DavidJenne

2 жыл бұрын

I had never thought of that before, but Im sure the large white areas of a partially-filled sheet of paper would throw the camera meter off and cause it to shut down the exposure some.

LOL - Someday you should do a livestream here on YT & have us guess "What color is Steve painting?" Who can type "Azo Green" or "Transparent Red Iron Oxide" into the chat fastest? ;-) Once I start fooling around color mixing, it's so fun that sometimes I run out of time to actually paint anything! At least this video helps me feel a little less foolish about it! Thanks Steve!

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

Mixing play is always valuable time spent. 😊

This was great, Steve! I would live to see you follow up with mid-summer greens and late summer greens. It's so helpful to see all those mixes. Thank you!

Ah, my favorite color(s)! Thanks for the insight on mixing. It's helpful seeing someone else demonstrate comparisons between brands, as one can only afford so many paints. 🎨 😁

I have just bought a basic 5 color M. Graham set, its gonna take a month to arrive in Brazil, I can't wait!

That was positively delicious!

Thank you for sharing, this is exactly what we all wanted

Besides the vibrancy of spring greens (which saying it makes me think of a fresh spring salad), my favorite time of day to see greens is just as the sun starts lowerig in the sky. There's a precise time that lasts just about 30 to 40 minutes every day, where the light is hitting the trees and vegetation at just the right angle, so that all the greens look like they were lit from the inside. Gorgeous!

I ran across your rant about watercolor styles and have to thank you for inspiring me to pick up my brushes again. I recently started painting again after several years . Raising a family, working. Fulltime in a non art job, etc. I watched too many KZread videos of watercolor painters and became frustrated and discouraged because I can not paint loosely. Always found myself painting realistically, and felt it was not "the way" to paint watercolor. Thank you for your rant. I am focusing on what style I like and am good at. You 've gotten me painting again.

@ninner196

9 ай бұрын

Good for you!😊

I was "painting" without paint while enjoying all the greens in the live oaks in the sun this afternoon. My paints are in another county😊 Thanks for this!

Wow, Steve. We all do things differently when it comes to greens. I tend to always neutralize spring grassy greens with a touch of cool red. I usually then mix it on the palette, and place it down. Then again I use the palette colour I have, to then find a dark. I like the new leaf foliage of a hakea ( a very old plant with different veins) DS watercolours, Permanent crimson, quin gold, and phthalo green. A Jane Blundell triad, she gave me these particular colours to use. (See her book on triads, just released..) Short funny story; Two days ago, I needed a dark green, to granulate, as a background, and I wanted to do it all in one go. (Very granulating, very dark, started dark greeny, but pushed it to a more red brown, black as I realized that a green would clash with my red/orange mushrooms, and it became an abstract piece.....as I made an error, yes we make mistakes after 40 years of painting and drawing...) So here is what I mixed, it may sound a little crazy...as there are a lot of pigments in the mixtures. phthalo green, quin rose (to get a black, and dark component) plus cascade green, plus green apatite genuine and perylene green, (to get the granulation and separation) and a few others I can't recall.. lol. The point is, that even mixes can be mixed further, as long as most of them are on one side of the colour wheel regardless of light, mid or dark values. I think it helps to have transparent pigments though. The colour was dark browny red black (started as a dark black green) and separated, and it granulated beautifully. After applying it all in one go, I was committed, and yes it was scary. Problem one was it was lunch time, so I thought, I have 15 mins to put this on. So I hurried it, and when I came to the background of the stipe (stem of mushroom) my hand shook, and I lost the thickness at the top of the stem shape. So as I had wrecked it. I decided to "properly wreck it". (I couldn't lift a dark over the stem width, didn't try) I sprayed it heavily, it ran down, and even on the hot press Fabriano Artistico A3 paper, showed lovely movement over the dry paper, which surprised me, which looked a little bit like lichen which was appropriate. The real funny aspect to this whole story, is that I was in a "botanical fungi scientific study workshop on the last day, supposed to produce a botanical painting of fungi from a sample". We measured each part of the mushroom, and I scaled up by 5. I needed a real lot of this background colour, and it was thick, creamy rich "tall and high" consistency. I really needed to have my masking fluid for the mushrooms, for it to work. So for me, it was a big, fat, learning fail, embarrassing, but good for me. I had never made a mix like it, but I definitely will make another dark like it soon enough! Lining my work propped on the wall next to all the other 8 works, made with detailed 000 brush fungi, that took them two days, smaller, Mine in 30 mins a to scale abstract at 5:1. It stood out and carried in a bad way....people loved the dark granulation, running down the branch. People looked at it and still wanted to save the red orange mushrooms in it.... In kindred spirit, Eliza Australia Tues 24th of May 2022

It's crazy, I've now been painting 3 years, and I don't think it was so long ago, that while I I had and have a good handle on color theory, I would still find myself getting confused about warm and cool colors on occasion.

Your color mixing videos are my favorite!🥰

I loved this video. Thank you 🇨🇦

Really great instruction. Thank you.

thank you for the head up on the travel brushes from Amazon. I got the black Ferrell set the come to a decent point and do not shed hair. they seem to be working well. Love the insight on the greens.

I had a visitor 20+ years ago who had grown up in Arizona. He complained that he had a headache because everything was so green and he didn't realize there were so many shades of green..lol...thats what upstate new york is...40+ shades of green...after being g in Ireland..we won.

Always great to learn of ways to make different greens - thanks so much. I love that there is a great variety beyond sap green!

I’ve been obsessed with broadening my green “collection” since last year - half mixing, half ready product. Thank you for this - it inspires me to play even more again! And I agree with sap green… I love swatching it as is, but noticed a few years ago that as soon as I start using sap in a project it always gets “contaminated” by other colors, blooms, and/or wash water. It’s simply too boring on its own, but a great spring board and segue to other greens.

This is so informative, Steve. ( as usual). Thank you. Also, I just watched your conversation with Marty and Denise Soden. She is a recent and beloved KZread artist-as are you. Thank you for having her explain her health challenges. I also am challenged physically and am delighted to learn that there’s a group of “spooners”. I hope to find them and join. God bless you!!

Thank you for these great visit with spring greens. This is a color I struggle with. This will help.

Love this very helpful video. Whether abstract or realistic, we almost all use all the variations of greens that may or may not actually be represented in nature.

Merci beaucoup 😊

This is a super helpful video. Thanks to you and other wonderful KZreadrs, I knew exactly what you were talking about!!!

Thanks for sharing this. It really shows that playing with your colors really is beneficial. I think for beginners say for example if you have 2 different brands they tend to keep all of the brands colors together when they paint instead of mixing the 2 brands colors together, I know I did this and I don't think I did it intentionally. So this is kind of a reminder as to play with your paint and different brands together. You do learn a lot by playing and find new things you like and remember some things you used to like or use. Thanks! Have a great day

Cool and warm are variable terms ... it depends on the neighboring colors ... use your pigments on scrap paper and see if they are warm-ER or cool-ER than the neighbor in every situation

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

Exactly. Well said!

Thank you, Steve. Great video. :)

Lol…branch out. I struggle so much with trees. This was very helpful…I’ll keep trying.

Wow! So very helpful! Thanks Steve!

Thank you, Steve! This was a tremendous help!

I leaned so much from you Sir! Thank you so much!

Fabulous, of course! Back in the 90s, I used my old Pentax film SLR in negative mode and quickly found complements. Quin rose and a blue green like viridian were perfect, much to my surprise. I don’t think my phone cameras have had that, but just taking a picture of your usual swatches and taking it in to a photo app could give you the a great reference.

Great video! Thanks 😊

Learn so much from you, thank you !

I am still in love with your M. Graham set. It’s been almost a year since I got it and I barely use any other paint. You did a wonderful job picking the colors, I love the single pigments, and the transparency of the colors you chose. The only thing I’ve added is a white gouache.

Very helpful😀

Thanks for sharing this. Thinking I may need to make a Green color wheel.

Great tutorial for painting a tree! Inspiring !

Thank you for your video. I am seeing you doing a plein air with these green.

Great video. The usefulness of identifying the pigment is that it IS the same pigment across brands. However, some pigments have range of color PV19 is a good example. It goes from very light to darker pink. Most pigments do not do that. They remain the same color. It is easier to predict mixing results when the paint holds only one pigment. Red is the main complement for green. All these other options are great options for variety.

Не понимаю английский язык,но все поняла 👍!!!

This was so interesting, thanks for sharing this, I've always hated greens, they can look flat

Very great description of warm and cool. I totally agree with learning to either make or tweak some of those sap greens because it is rather easy to pick out certain brands in paintings which makes me a bit embarrassed cause I shouldn’t be thinking of that but it happens. I love the nickel azo yellow, it does great things to colors and I love to mix phalogreen with quin gold ( or the 3) as a sap green and add a bit more nickel azo yellow sometimes. Recently I have been working on blends with the phalogreen ys and it is my fav. Happy Spring Steve! Enjoy painting. For once I am painting the right season. Haha.

Warm and cool colors... When it comes to blue it can get very confusing because saturated blue with more red in it can look like an autumn or winter sky and read cool to cold because of body temperature associations just as a cerulean blue, a greener blue and therefore “cooler” is often the soft blue of a spring or summer sky and thus we experience it as warm. And that’s where warm and cool colors, at least with the blues, can make no sense at all. “I know cerulean is a cool blue, but it feels warm.” Yup. It feels like hazy days at the beach, like lazy swimming pool days, like summer, whereas that deep ultramarine blue (red shade) is crisp apples, orange and yellow leaves, snow and ski slopes.

@mindofwatercolor

2 күн бұрын

Yeah, I get it. But in reality color temperature has nothing really to do with actual heat or cold except our associations.

I totally enjoyed this Steve. Making greens especially Spring greens, is just one of my favorite things to do with watercolor. The possibilities are endless. However I tend to always use a warmer yellow, something that leans toward red being the compliment of green. I like M Graham Indian Yellow with Phthalo Green BS. It makes a beautiful Sap Green or Spring Green. Better yet, Quinacridone Golds with any Phthalo blue, even Phthalo Turquoise. I love a Payne's Grey with a bluishness like Schmincke "Payne's Grey Bluish' or Winser & Newton Payne's Gray added to my mix of Phthalo Blue GS/Quin gold. It literally turns it into a green that looks almost identical to Perylene Green. Like I said, the possibilities are endless and so much fun. (PS, I've seen some nearly neon looking green landscape in Hawaii that wouldn't be believable in a painting.)

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, so many possibilities. None wrong!

Wonderful video. Azo Green is one of my favorites, thanks to you. And thank you so much for mentioning REALISTIC greens. Remember when no one used Phthalos? And then suddenly everyone was but you were the only one who seemed to know that neutralizing them made some very beautiful colors. Question and a request. I use MG's P. Blue and P Green to make a turquoise, would you recommend MG turquoise instead? I do have a spot on my palette I could fit it into - not that I couldn't use that as a reason to get another palette, lol. My request is one of your amazing spontaneous landscapes with these spring greens maybe showing a little masking like you were talking about?

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

MG's turquoise is just a convenience mix of what you already do. It mixes PG15:3 with PG7. So no, I wouldn't necessarily recommend unless you need the added convenience. I actually bought it for a limited color pan set where I had fewer slots. The combining of those pigments made it a fit.

Many. Maaaaaaaaaaany. I can built me an entire 24 palette with the amount of greens I have lol. Its ridiculous :P What can I say. Its an addiction specially where I live with winsor and newton, schmincke, white nights and sennelier fairly cheap the options are endless... ( You dont want to know... dont even ask :P LOL )

Awesome video Steve. Watching this I could see how this could easily apply to both watercolor pencils as well as to colored pencils (even though you're starting with what you call light greens in the watercolor/colored pencils sets). One of these days could you do a video on getting late summer greens/hay with either watercolor pencils or watercolors but starting with light greens/cool yellows (since those would most easily approximate the starting point in watercolor pencils)?

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

Well as you say, this would/could apply directly to watercolor pencils.

Honestly, I find the warm-cool dichotomy to be more helpful with overall color composition than with an individual shade. If we conceive of a saturated scarlet-orange as being the warm pole, and a deep true blue to be the cool pole, then we can conceptualize colors based on their absolute difference in angle from those points. But there is a lot of ambiguity in the way we use language for colors. "Blue" is an incredibly wide angle of hues. And "Orange" is incredibly narrow. And if "Blue" surrounds the "cool" pole, then how much does saying a "warm" blue really tell us about the hue angle? On a practical level, there are very few paintings where I would add a shade of blue to warm the overall temperature of the painting! Instead, I find it more useful for mixing and for hue identification to think of what direction a color is leaning and how much. Maybe "blue" spans a whole lot of hue angles, but is my blue closer to green or to purple? This tells me a lot more about how it will mix, and how it will harmonize with the rest of the colors in my painting.

Wow, you make it look so simple. Yet, I am sure it isn't

Is it my color blindness showin? The green golds don’t look green at all! More like golden tans! Are green golds really green? Enjoying your videos so much! I have so much to practice but have learned a great deal. Thank you for your work.

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

It will depend on your viewing screen somewhat but yes, they are very gold/tan but there is a definite green component too.

For me warm vs cool ‘leaning’ remember compared to another colour always. Orange is warm blue is cool for most colours. When orange is being evaluated yellow becomes cool and red becomes warm with right in the middle being warmest. For blue I feel like turquoise is warm so I have to intentionally add mentally ‘mixing cool’ or ‘scientific cool’ and admit it’s emotionally warm to me so that it works mentally for me. Towards green is cool ‘scientifically/mixing’ regardless of the emotional feel. And towards violet/purple is warm ‘scientifically/mixing’ regardless of how it emotionally feels cool to me. For blues I’ve had to forcefully and intentionally separate it into emotionally warm/cool vs scientifically/mixing warm/cool otherwise I instinctively reverse them as turquoise FEELS tropical/warm and ultramarine/more indigo blue FEELS cool/winters. But for colour mixing it is reversed. That’s been the most difficult part for me. I also advise trying lots of mixes and taking notes in sketchbooks. Premixing half and full pans (make your own convince colours) not everyone enjoys spending most of their time/effort while painting mixing I love having pre mixed custom options. Invest in larger tubes of colours for mixes. Paint looks and works different depending on the paper as well, do paper tests and keep notes. Fresh on the paper mix is different than mixed in the pallet or in the pan, etc. some tubes are best fresh while others are best used resettled from dry. It’s complex really. Looking into the pigment info and using that can help too (but is a lot of research/knowledge). Do lots of practice/experiments. Do more research with supplies you already have. Make notes of what seems to be missing then research options before purchasing. Intentionally try newer mixes and combinations sometimes to break out of a rut. Try random limited colour challenges get dnd/TTRPG dice and make random charts and roll. Ex get 20 colours you decide on (want to learn about, favs, least favs, mix, etc) and roll a 20 sided dice a number of times equal to the limited pallet (usually 2-5) now take just those colours and do practice/mixes and tests than make at least one painting with just this limited pallet. Take notes. It’s a great way to learn and be excited about what you already own as well! Consider trying these on different papers as well!

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

A color wheel will sort out most of it. Place a color accurately on the wheel and its pretty easy to see where it leans compared to another.

daniel smith serpentine primatek

The mixing complement to the cool yellow green is rose (pv19). Blue green is red/maroon (pr108/254/206/179), Sap green is diox violet (pv23). All of these are available on the mixing complement page at the Handprint website. py129 (azo green/green gold) is more complex because it falls very far into the center of the wheel and is really a desaturated yellow (not far off of yellow ochre).. it should be closer to a blue violet but it wasn't listed, at the time of the creation of the website it was pretty rare and not very popular... so it would require some experimenting to be sure. The thing about mixing complements is they are not always what you think, and don't always correspond to the visual color wheel (which is why adding red violet to the yellow green in the demo should have worked but instead made brown and not the intended grey). I avoid using paynes grey and neutral tint as generic "neutralizers".. they are both beautiful neutrals on their own but like tube greens they are highly overused and don't actually neutralize but rather overpower colors to pull them to an artificial grey. Surprised there was no discussion about blue, by far the best way to get interesting and varied greens that fit in a specific scene is to use the existing primaries.. cerulean is a favorite not only for the cool tone but the beautiful texture and softer intensity.

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, experimentation is almost always needed for neutralizing with compliments. I tend to use near compliments more than perfect compliments because of the more interesting muted hues you can make. I did mention blues. Prussian Blue, and Cobalt Blue were used specifically plus I named a couple others. I also said there are a ton of possibilities. Do I think Cerulean will create better greens than Turquoise or Prussian blue? Nope! I much prefer the later. And Cerulean is a little too opaque for my tastes anyway. I usually only use it in skies or water. Paynes gray is sometimes overused in general but that's just being aware of what you're doing with it. I think it works well in mixes with cool greens and most blues. Like Sap Green there isn't anything wrong with Paynes inherently. Both can be used very successfully. I disagree about neutral tint. It's underused in my opinion (or perhaps misused is more accurate). I know from comments that many artists don't know what to do with it. I would never tell Alvaro Castagnet that he uses too much. He must buy that stuff by the pound. Many brands of NT I don't like. I prefer M. Graham's by far because of the violet cast. Very useful. Color use is always highly subjective.

🙏🌊🔱🌪️🌪️🌪️

These are my favourite types of greens. Love the ways of neutralizing and adding interest to them, also the tree painting process. Thanks for sharing! Ps.: I always get confused with cold/warm blues; since both red and yellow are warm colours, how to decide what’s a warm and what’s a cold blue? I can see Prussian blue being cold, but not cobalt turquoise, and both lean more towards yellow. I consider French ultramarine a warm blue, but heard other artists calling it cold. Is there a hard rule?

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

As I mentioned in the video it's all about how one blue compares with another blue not their absolute warmth or coolness. Blues can all be considered cool more or less. That's not really helpful. But a French Ultramarine is warm in comparison to say a Cobalt Blue or a Cerulean Blue. Again, how do they compare to each other and how do they lean on the color wheel? Turquoise leans cooler than Prussian Blue (more towards green) so it could be said that Prussian Blue is warmer than Turquoise even if both are cool. Prussian Blue though would be considered cooler than French Ultramarine. It's just a matter of degrees. To use an analogy. 20 degrees F and 10 degrees F are both cold but 20 degrees is warmer than 10. Works with warm colors too. Pyrrol Scarlet is warmer than Quinacridone Rose. One leans orange and the other leans purple or bluish.

@coloredcarol8074

2 жыл бұрын

@@mindofwatercolor I understand what you’re saying, but I still find it very subjective when it comes to blues. It’s more obvious for reds, where leaning towards blue is cold and towards yellow is warm, but blue has two warm counterparts to lean into. My questioning is who’s to say a blue leaning towards purple is warmer than a blue leaning towards green when both colours are considered in theory “cold”? I’ve always thought of a French ultramarine as a warm blue for example, but have heard other artists calling it cold and considering cerulean blue a warm blue. If someone tells me to mix a warm red and a yellow I know exactly what to go for, but if they told me a warm blue and a yellow it’s quite possible we have different interpretations, that’s my point.

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

@@coloredcarol8074 Honestly there's not much subjectivity. I understand an artist may have an opinion about how colors feel but for the sake of everyone understanding terms when identifying colors, the consensus is a blue that leans red is considered warmer than one leaning green which is cool.

Thank you. This was a grest lesson. Say...I have never seen your shape of paint pallet. Can I ask you where you purchased it?

@mindofwatercolor

7 ай бұрын

You'll find a link in the description, 😊

@personalgrowthcourseskmf5443

7 ай бұрын

I saw a few items but no pallets. I click on all three links. Could I please ask you for a bit of assistance?

@mindofwatercolor

7 ай бұрын

@@personalgrowthcourseskmf5443 I’m not where I can look it up right now but it’s the Mijello link. It’s there I promise. It’s also in my Amazon store. Link is there for that also.

@personalgrowthcourseskmf5443

7 ай бұрын

Ok ill get help to locate it. I'm not very techy

@mindofwatercolor

7 ай бұрын

@@personalgrowthcourseskmf5443 I’ll send the link as soon as I’m able but it’s just a text listing in the video description block. If you saw some of the links you should be able to see them all.

Thanks for this great lesson. I noticed that you didn’t use any Winsor Newton colors do you dislike them?

@LuzJulianna

2 жыл бұрын

I was going tobuy a W&N palette but there was a disclaimer saying it's bad for the soil and water, so I went to M Graham instead. Sorry to jump on this.

@jenniefrench1338

2 жыл бұрын

@@LuzJulianna Any professional brand uses similar pigments to begin with. Daniel Smith wc says harmful to fish and aquatic life, likewise with MG no living being would be in their right mind to dump or ingest any pigment, including cadmium free paint. Also it is a personal issue if one wants to use cadmium free paint, it may not be as lightfast but Winsor & Newton ,at least gouache has been used by Steve and in the past on a video he had referred to the cracking out. I use several brands but don’t like my paint cracking out on me which WN has done in my palette but the quality is just as good. Nothing wrong with it. If you check the specs sheet on any watercolor brand they will have that warning but on some you have to put on your cheaters or use a magnifying glass.

@GrandmaMuggy

2 жыл бұрын

I think there are colors in every brand that may be toxic, just have to look and make a choice. I was just wondering about WN. I have some of them and enjoy them

@LuzJulianna

2 жыл бұрын

@@jenniefrench1338 I didn't see the disclaimer for M Graham, as it was there for W&N and Schmincke, but I'll investigate about M. Graham.

@LuzJulianna

2 жыл бұрын

@@jenniefrench1338 I never thought of someone ingesting the paints, its because I live in the countryside and some residues may end up in the soil. And if there's a more sustainable brand, as it's said about MG, I'll go for it.

Anybody told you that you could voice Kermit the Frog? If you ever get tired of painting.

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

Can’t say I’ve heard that one before, no.

Hi, I have a question about your set with M. Graham. Is there an email to contact you?

@mindofwatercolor

2 жыл бұрын

steve@mindofwatercolor.com