Mixing Greens

I've started following the wonderful art blog of Susan Bronsak (see it here) and love to see her ideas for working with watercolors.  One of her posts showed how she made color charts by making images for each color rather than just making a square or blob of color, as I have always done.  Since I have recently purchased some new watercolor paints from Daniel Smith, I decided to do a page of green samples as Susan did.  Although I can't paint trees nearly as well as she does, I enjoyed doing my samples this way and taking a little time to choose a tree that might require the shade I was mixing.

The four green paints that I currently have are:  Winsor Green (Winsor Newton), Hookers Green (Liquitex) and Sap Green (Daniel Smith) and Diopside (Daniel Smith).  First I did a tree in the green alone, then mixed each with Zoisite (Daniel Smith) and again with Burnt Sienna (Daniel Smith).

Just a note about Zoisite:  it's my favorite mixing color for doing nature sketches.  It is a granulating dark greenish gray that tones down bright colors, gives them texture, and makes them look more natural, in my opinion.  I've used it mostly on ocean and sky landscapes, but love what it does to the greens. It's from the Daniel Smith Primatek series, which are made from mined earth minerals.

My next step will be to do a page of blue and yellow mixes.  So many greens, so little time...