It's easy being green...

2017 Cicada's Song 12x16 oil

Recently I posted an image of a painting I’d had in mind for months. It had to be green; deeply, intensely richly green.  The feeling of being surrounded by, smelling and hearing the richness of green is what I remembered, and it was what I wanted to share.  Concerned about how to accomplish this task - green is notoriously difficult to control  -  I sat on the idea until the discomfort of not trying was greater than the fear of not doing it well.

First of all, thank you for your kind comments. It’s always really nice to know I hit the mark. 
​
So what’s with green? It should be easy. At last count manufacturers make up to 19 different greens. Greens so dark they appear as black. Some so garish they seem unreal. One can buy greens that are minty, dusty, blue or yellow, muddy, golden or brown-ish. Transparent or opaque. So why is it so hard to find the right one? 

It’s a tricky color, green is.  The question is, which green do you think you need? 

The green of distant hills in the spring? Shadowy summer foliage? The warm verdant tones of fall? Leafy grey-green of elm trees? The blue green of firs, immature cottonwoods, young maples?  Grassy meadows in shadow, or in intense light? The worn out grass of October or the energized pastures of spring? Water green from algae or tinged blue with the colors of the sky? Any of the preceding scenes in morning, noon or evening?

 The speckled-y green/blue of Handsome Husband’s eyes?

You get the idea. (Plus, my quota of question marks is nearly up.)

To those of you who wondered which greens I used in the painting, the truth is this: none. 
​
Go back to kindergarten, would you? How do we get green? By mixing blue and yellow, that’s how!
And the kicker? A red or two.  The addition of a complementary color to a combination of primaries gives richness and depth that cannot be achieved with only 2 hues, especially when it comes to making green. 

Aliz crimson, prussian blue, lemon yellow and white. Many variations with only 4 tubes of paint.

My palette holds two blues, a warm and a cool. Two or maybe three yellows, again, a warm and a cool, and naples yellow, considered a neutral. A couple of reds. Yep, a warm and a cool. White, of course. Not one pre-mixed-tube-straight-from-the-manufacturer green.  By working from the warm and cool side of each hue, and by adjusting the amounts of each pigment added, one can achieve a combination of colors that can only be understood using higher math. Since we don’t do math here, let’s just say it’s a lot of different greens.  At least eleventy-nine.
​
Which is exactly eleventy-eight more than you can get by buying a tube of pre-mixed green.