Greener greens

I read this quote from Pablo Picasso the other day:

They’ll sell you thousands of greens. Veronese green and emerald green and cadmium green and any sort of green you like, but that particular green, never! Pablo Picasso

And yes there are plenty of greens available to buy. Some of these can be useful, but many are just “not right” for use straight from the tube. They tend to look false and harsh, especially when you are using them to paint the landscape.

So what is the alternative? How can we paint all those greens? I think there are two things we can do – we can buy a manufactured green in a tube and then mellow it down a bit with another colour, or we can mix our own from blue and yellow. With either of these approaches we are on to a winner! We can then make any green we want. We can make that particular green!

Let me give you some examples:

Here I’ve used viridian straight from the watercolor pan. It’s such a strong and unnatural green that you might think it would be dangerous to use in a landscape. But all you need to do is to add a tiny amount of an earth colour to it and you create some amazing and transparent greens, perfect for foliage! I added burnt sienna in differing amounts (warning – you don’t need much!), to make the greens in the first column, and I added a little raw sienna (you could use yellow ochre for the same effect) to the viridian to make the greens in the right hand column. What great colours!

Now let’s have a go at making our own greens with blue and yellow.

In this example I used ultramarine blue and then added small amounts of raw sienna (an earth yellow), or cadmium yellow, or lemon yellow.

And here is cerulean blue with the same three yellows added.

You can take control of your greens! And you can make an infinite variety of them to suit any mood or scene you are painting. So please don’t run around looking to buy that particular green! You can make it yourself from the paints you already have!

If you are interested in finding out more about colour mixing and how I control my colours, then you might want to check out my online colour mixing course which you can find here: Learn the secret of succesful color mixing (How to get the colour you want every time you paint).

Happy painting!

#colormixing #mixinggreens #learningtopaint #colourmixing #foliagecolours #paintinggreens #watercolourpainting

Paint small, paint often

Have you ever wondered what is the fastest way to learn to paint? What is the best way to make a major leap in your painting abilities? Well, here is one answer to those questions…

Paint small and paint often!

When I began painting seriously many years ago I felt that I needed to work BIG in order to really learn the craft. But each big painting took a long time to complete and I’m not really sure how much I learned during the process. I think there is a law at work here. I am now pretty sure that we only learn one thing (or on a good day, perhaps two things) from each painting we do.

So, if this law is real, and I truly believe it is, then the more paintings we produce the more we should learn, and the better our paintings will become! And the best way to produce more paintings is to paint small and paint often.

Think about it… one large painting that has taken days, weeks or even months to produce = one thing learned. one small painting made each day = one thing learned each day. Which one gives the fastest rate of growth?

What did I learn from doing these tiny paintings? I learned about the power of tonal values, I learned about the amazing effects of colour, I learned about what makes a good composition, I learned about simplifying a scene to it’s bare minimum, and I learned that I could create a decent painting in about 15 minutes! Now that’s not bad for one day’s work!

So here’s my challenge to you…

Set aside a week and make the decision to paint just one small painting a day. They don’t have to be as small as these, but just make sure that you can finish in under an hour. Then at the end of the week, look back and see how much you have learned. I’m sure you will be impressed!

Have fun! Please like this post (if you do!)

#learningtopaint #paintsmall #paintingtips #watercolourpainting

To granulate or not to granulate?

I have just returned from tutoring on a painting holiday in the beautiful Cotswolds in the UK. The area is full of quaint old villages, the ancient houses constructed from a golden limestone and bordered by village ponds, trees, and lots of Wisteria in full and fragrant bloom. It was a fantastic time of painting and making new friends.

I sketched quite a bit on the various day trips out and about, and on my return I have begun to make small coloured paintings in a sketchbook from some of these pencil drawings. Let me show you two of them and then explain why they look different. They are both similar scenes from different places, and I used the same watercolour paints in both. But the top one has significant granulation and the bottom one has not.

What is granulation? Well, it’s an effect which is caused by some paints, but not all. These paints are less finely ground and have some particles of pigment that are larger and which separate out of the paint and settle into the dimples in the watercolour paper, causing a mottled effect as the paint dries. I have recently started using a Daniel Smith colour called Green Apatite Genuine which is great at doing this. it is a lovely foliage green and when it granulates it becomes mottled with brown. This gives a semi-realistic foliage effect without having to do to much.

I also used an ultramarine blue for the skies in both pictures, and the top one has granulated while the bottom one has not. So, what is the secret? How can you either make granulation happen, or avoid it, even when using exactly the same paints? The answer in this case seems to have been the tilt of the paper. I painted the first sketch with the paper flat on the table top. This allowed the granules of pigment to settle down nicely into the hollows in the paper (a Moleskine watercolour sketchbook).

The second sketch was painted with the sketchbook on a slope of about 30 degrees. This resulted in a much smoother and flatter finish and little granulation.

I found this to be an interesting way to control the end result, (and anything that helps us control the temperamental watercolour is a blessing!), and I hope it will help you have a little more control over your painting as well.

#Moleskinesketchbook #watercolourpaintingtips #sketching #DanielSmith #granulation