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Getting Green Right

“I just don’t have the right/enough greens” – the universal complaint of pastelists.  The human eye can distinguish more shades of green than any other color.  (And Terry Ludwig offers a set of 90 greens --click here to feast your eyes! the only individual color to receive this honor!)  As humans evolved, distinguishing shades of green which would indicate different kinds of plants and degrees of ripeness was essential to survival.  For artists this is a blessing and a curse, much like our highly developed sense of facial recognition.  We can easily recognize when greens are ‘wrong’ in a painting in the same way that we can recognize when the human face or figure is wrong.  It’s not so much that these things are harder to paint, but that we’re better at detecting when things are off.

But we can use this special ability to our advantage and with a little training, make our paintings more alive.  Here’s a way of expanding your range of greens, regardless of how many you may have in your box.

Greens in the landscape occur in layers—trees, grass, mountain ranges:  all create and express depth.  It is impossible to do this with one pastel stick, or with one hue. 

The realism of your greens will greatly expand when you layer them – below and above—with other hues.  This color swatch exercise is a fun and freeing way to create an inspiration board for your studio—for the next time you are stuck feeling like you don’t have the right green.

1.  Underpainting on sanded paper

Create 2 underpainting color swatches each of various warm and cools, from yellow to orange to pink to magenta to purple.  Then, layer a green pastel onto each.  The catch:  you must find a warm and cool for each in matching value.  Practical uses for this:  Gives you great inspirations for underpaintings to liven up a very green scene.

2. Dry layering/hatching on Canson paper

pick four greens (at least).  Create 4 color swatches with each green.  Then, layer each green with 4 different colors, in matching value to alter the green.  Practical uses for this:  Mid painting, you’ve got a green field. You need to make the back of the field recede, and the front advance.  Your color swatches will help you decide what to layer on your green in various places to alter your field (pale blue or yellow in back? Orange in front?  Note differences, be adventurous, and smile: Fall is here!

Fresh Greens Study 9 x 12