Art is the Process

Today I completed a painting that will be in my August solo exhibition. “Sky over North Fork Creek” was inspired by one of the many photographs I took while I was a resident artist at Tombstone campground, up the Dempster Highway north of Dawson City, last summer. This area is an amazing natural wonder with both open tundra and spruce forest, as well as shrub trees such as willow; wide valleys and mountains covered in lichen that turns gold and red in the fall. Being far away from any center of human population, the power of nature feels very strong here.

I wanted to express the sense of flow and energy in the sky. In this case I didn’t use a grayscale underpainting, but it still took several layers and some evolving to look just right. In the beginning, I painted the sky using only transparent washes.

With a few layers of transparency, the clouds looked very realistic, but the blue part of the sky was a bit flat. It even turned grey in some areas, where layering different transparent washes of blue with too many different pigments mixed in didn’t work out (I don’t have a photograph of that stage, or I would show you what I mean). I decided that the blue sky had to be more stylized and energetic. As I was working out how to paint flowing lines that would blend together just enough to still go with the soft clouds, I thought to myself “wait a minute, I just realized something that took me fourty two years to understand- art is an adverb.”

Later I realized that the artistic part of my brain doesn’t seem to understand grammar. An adverb describes an action, and instead of saying “I am running fast” I can’t say “I am running art”. It makes no sense! But wait, what I really meant is that art is the root of the adverb “artfully”.

What does it mean to do something artfully?

Is doing something artfully the same as skill? If I took a photograph and reproduced every detail of it as a painting, would that be artful? It would take skill, talent and and enormous amount of patience, but I think “artful” is something else.

Is it the same as imagination? I could imagine any random thing. For example, I could imagine a flying green bunny with fangs and sharp claws. Now, say I painted it on a canvas, but I just sort of slapped it together in a few minutes, added a happy face, and signed it. Is that artful? Possibly, if it could be considered dada art, but that’s already made waves nearly a hundred years ago.

Dada was the art of rebellion against everything that was established as art, and everything that came before. Today in 2012, the art of rebellion is officially the establishment, so there is nothing to rebel against- unless you consider traditional art to be rebellious! Therefore I think, no, making art that is imaginative but deliberately done without a lot of attention or skill, is not artful (that’s not to say I think the art of the original dada movement was done without attention or skill. Actually I am a huge fan of it because of the humour and irony, in the context of those times).

Is artfulness the combination of skill and imagination? Maybe that’s it, but let’s see… I could take the fanged green bunny I imagined, and given sufficient time an patience, paint it to look as if it were a photograph. That takes skill and imagination. Now in my mind’s eye, I see really bad art. It’s tacky. Okay, what I consider to be bad art, that might be someone else’s gold, but what exactly is so horrid about it? I guess that to me it’s the lack of authentic self expression.

Instead I could find a way to paint it that plays with and brings out the qualities of the paint itself- in an artful way– an imaginative way, that takes attention, planing, flexibility, a willingness to take creative risks, and to express something authentic. The artfulness is in the action, in the process of painting, not the finished painting, but it shows in the finished painting and makes it more interesting, giving it the personality of the artist who created it.

Now if I truly want to give my paintings personality, I should choose a subject that means something to me- not necessarily something that needs to be explained in words. The meaning might come from a remembered place, a feeling, a sense of connection to ancestors, energy, or simply the appreciation of the beauty of nature.

Red Pigments and Translucency: Orange you Glad I didn’t say Cadmium?

To me, the idea of painting with cadmium colours is kind of like drinking coffee- that is not a perfect analogy because they are poisonous and definitely don’t grow on trees. I mean they have been an automatic habit of mine that I fell into at an early age because I thought it was the right thing to do; and over time, like those morning, afternoon, and evening cups of coffee, replacing used up tubes of cadmium red and cadmium yellow acrylic paint with more of the same was not a decision, it was just what I did, on account of having been told in art school that cadmium is best. I have purchased other types of cool red and magenta paint over the years for mixing purples, but when it comes to mixing hues in the warm red to orange range, you need cadmium red light, don’t you? Or do you, really?

This is an unfinished painting that I have been working on of boats on the Yukon River, before freezeup time. It is based on a photograph I took last October. Within a week or less the boats would not be able to leave the shore, because the ice flows would be growing on the river. In fact I noticed that canoe and rowboat are still there, though barely visible covered in deep snow.

Now I want to talk about the colours I used in this painting, because perhaps my process may help others who have run into similar colour mixing issues. I will get fairly detailed, so readers who don’t paint might want to skim down to the ending paragraphs, where I offer my insight into the world of caffeinated beverages…

I started with a neutral underpainting using burnt umber, phthalo blue and ultramarine blue for my mixed black, plus titanium white.

Then, I started to paint the sky using cadmium red, mixed with hansa orange, as well as other pigments for the blue, grey and purplish tones, including ultramarine blue and quinacridone violet. In some brush strokes I blended my red based mix with my blue to purple mix in an effort to create softer variations of the brighter areas.

I took a picture of my painting (not the picture above, this was an earlier stage) and posted it on my Facebook page. It looked great, because the glow from the camera flash somehow made the red pop out. Actually, in real life, I thought there were a lot of muddy, gross tones in the sky. Where it was supposed to be soft, it looked earthy, and who wants earth tones in the sky? Here is a close up of that early version of the sky, adjusted back to harsh reality, to show what I mean.

Now in the more recent version, where the original colours are painted over, you don’t see any of those murky, completely un-sky like blobs of messed up colour that were supposed to be softer versions of the brighter hues, that didn’t quite work out. It’s much better because my new quinacridone red arrived in the mail. Qunacridone red is a cool, slightly blue red, yet ironically, compared to cadmium red, it blends in a far superior way- in my opinion- with hansa yellow or orange, especially when you add any other translucent pigment to the mix. It also blends well with ultramarine blue to make subtle yet rich purple hues. You can see I have used it to mix a whole range from peach to soft plum, without any sharp transitions.

Unlike the cadmiums, quinacridone red paint has a degree of transparency and luminosity. Aside from the cadmiums, most of the bright pigments, by which I mean any coloured pigment that is not an organic earth tone, have compatible degrees of transparency and luminosity. This means they can be freely mixed and matched without worrying about unplanned shifts from clear tones to chalky murky ones.

Therefore, the main issue to deal with becomes just the fact that some pigments have much more staining power than others, and can too quickly overpower everything they are mixed with. As I mentioned in a post about green, the pigments with the most staining power are the phthalos. They can be controlled by carefully pre mixing them with other pigments that tone them down- either that or just use less powerful pigments if they can do the same job.

Now, aside from the underpainting, the painting of boats, at this post cadmium stage where it’s at now, uses various blends of four main pigments (plus titanium white)- quinacridone red, hansa orange, ultramarine blue– and phthalo green, pre mixed with the other three pigments so I wouldn’t constantly have problems like ending up with bright green when I meant to mix a purplish grey. These days I’m into fluid, transparent paint, so I mix up all the colours I want to use with a lot of liquid acrylic emulsion, in sealable plastic containers for easy access.

I also used an earth tone, yellow ochre, in the trees at left, the interior of the rowboat, and as part of the wash, along with a bit of hansa yellow and hansa orange, for the canoe to make it more of a burnt orange, because otherwise the colour would not have been distinct enough from the rowboat.

Transparent pigments are much better for washes than opaque ones. Yellow ochre, being an earth tone, is very opaque, but I used a lot of acrylic medium. Even with that, it does not create an even wash but tends to create a partly opaque, textured effect, which was good in this case because I was painting a canoe with old, rough paint. Note that this also explains why, if you mix acrylic medium with cadmium paints, they still will not behave like the more translucent pigments.

In the water and sky, I was able to achieve a lot of subtle colour transitions without murkiness. Murkiness to me is an accidental, meaningless shift from luminosity to chalkiness, that dulls down the way colours are perceived, and creates conflicting effects that confuse the eye. Sometimes you might want such a shift from clarity to chalkiness- for example, to show earth emerging from water. Otherwise, I believe it is always best to avoid earth in the sky and water, unless it’s a painting of a dust storm.

I should mention that titanium white is very opaque, but somehow, it is quite luminous at the same time, so it does not dull down translucent colours. When you do want a dull, warm, earthy white, there is unbleached titanium.

Here are some colour mixing tests to show how mixing opaque paint (cadmium red) with a transparent one (hansa yellow) causes murkiness-

The more red part of the range of hues looks okay- if rather garish- but there is an abrupt shift from dull brown to yellow on the right. True, the colours are not blended with a lot of thoroughness, but that is just the point- if the pigments were compatible, they should make a range of interesting effects even or especially where everything is not labouriously blended and flattened. What happened to nice clear yellow orange? If that’s what I was trying to mix, I would be sad about the results.

In contrast, you can see the compatibility of, for example, a mixture of quinacridone red and hansa orange,gradually blended into hansa yellow. Even though this combination does not make pure, screaming bright oranges,they are rich, vibrant and natural.
Note that different monitors may change the way colours are displayed, so if this doesn’t look fabulous on yours, I would still encourage you to try it.

Quinacridone red also has the advantage of mixing beautiful purples, which you cannot do with cadmium red at all (although if you want really bright purples, you need quinacridone magenta and/or quinacridone violet).

But wait- what if you wanted to mix cadmium red with cadmium yellow? They’re both opaque, so they should be more compatible, right? Why certainly, here is what you get:

Note that on the left, you still get a somewhat brownish yellow, but it doesn’t seem to clash, because everything is equally flat and opaque. You would still need to purchase a tube of cadmium orange if you wanted to get a nice clear yellow orange with cadmium yellow. However, it’s apparent that you need cadmium pigments if you want to mix a pure, almost spectral warm red to orange hue.

I’m not sure if this occurs in nature. The closest thing might be orange, the fruit, but is it really quite that orange, or could it be painted just as well with the other pigments? Cadmium hues may still be needed to paint things like pylons, danger signs (in Canada and the United States- I’m told that in Ireland, danger signs are more sensible earthy shades), sports logos, and circus themes such as clowns and artificially coloured orange soda.

Anyway, I started out talking about coffee, so you may wonder, what is my beef about that, anyway?

These days, everyone seems to complain about not having time for anything. I don’t necessarily know that coffee is a primary cause of that, or that many people are as sensitive to it as I have become. I do know that mainstream society seems to be more and more about rushing around like a busy beehive, that coffee, in North America anyway, is a major part of that culture, and that being under the same influence as everyone else doesn’t help to shift gears and do something, like painting, that requires quiet focus and concentration.

Over the last year or so, I started noticing symptoms, including that churning feeling in my stomach, as if I swallowed battery acid, and finding that long periods of concentration did not come naturally anymore- it seems to me now that I should have known that could be caused by sensitivity to coffee. It could be caffeine or it could be other substances in coffee beans, because tea seems to be fine for me.

Now I really do not know whether or not a lot of people are sensitive to coffee and in denial of it. It seems to me that the popularity of dark roast beans could be causing more problems, but that doesn’t mean I would personally switch to light roast and less strong brews. That would be like hearing “gee whiz, why don’t you try switching to tepid dishwater before you give up?”

Anyhow despite the pain and everything, I kept drinking my gut rot strong coffee as I have pretty much every single day of my life for twenty five years. I tried to quit a few times in the past, but those short times don’t add up to much compared to twenty five years, and I obsessed about coffee the whole time while I wasn’t drinking it. Sometimes in recent years I have gotten down to just one cup a day, which seems like nothing compared to I can’t count how many cups a day in college, but that one cup had to be remarkably dense.

Recently something peculiar happened I never would have anticipated, which was that when I drank chai tea with cloves, I didn’t crave coffee anymore, and actually forgot to drink coffee one day. Since then I still keep forgetting.

This is a very good thing, because I find I can focus on painting and become absorbed in it, in a more natural way again. Feeling focused is also directly related to what I wrote about painting as contemplation.

After all, it is not necessary to just keep doing things the same way without questioning them.

 

Painting as Contemplation

I am contemplating contemplation, as I struggle once again with the underpainting for a complicated subject. I often paint subjects that I find challenging. If I decide a certain photograph I took that would make a nice a painting, and then I think it looks way too difficult, I know I need to paint it for certain. Now, all artists have mental blocks we have to fight to keep the creative process flowing. One of my mental blocks is thinking that I should do everything right the first time. Please note the heavy dose of irony in my impossibly conflicting goals.

Working on the underpainting for the Villiage of Farrera...

It helps to contemplate why I paint in the first place. What is it exactly the artist (in this case, me, since I can’t necessarily generalize about every artist) gets out of this labourious process that may lead to satisfaction sometimes, and other times down twisting paths of self doubt and frustration? What exactly is the good in anything worth pursuing?

These days I think the mass media would have us believe that what people are supposed to want is entertainment in the form of distraction, sensory overload, a lot of information at a rapid pace with no depth, and plenty of jittery, over-caffeinated jumps from one thing to the next. To me, that is so irritating I don’t watch television because it actually gives me a headache, so I’m pretty sure that has nothing to do with what I’m after- except that perhaps it’s the opposite-?

Then I recall that when I was much younger, I used to think the greatest thing in life was to be the very best in something. I’m not much of a naturally competitive person, so I must have been just reflecting the culture. Then I would start to worry about it. What if a person was finally, indisputably, the best in the world at something or other, but next year, somebody else was? Would it all that striving be for nothing, then?

Now I’m not trying to be simplistic and nail down a single answer about why I paint, or why anyone should be motivated to paint. I just know one thing that helps is to realize how much I value contemplation. Contemplation is being in the moment, completely grounded in the immediate experience of where you are and what you are doing. Animals have that all the time- except they don’t create art. They also don’t exactly have language in the way humans do, and language can get in the way, because it takes the mind out of that contemplative state of being and into the world of collective concerns.

Living in a world of fast paced distractions means it takes a conscious effort to shift gears. Living in a world that places such a high value on being the “best” means it takes a conscious effort to let go of that. Letting go is being aware that I have a tendency to twist myself into knots when I don’t do something right the first time (I suspect that I’m not alone in that)- and that gets directly in the way of one of the biggest things that motivates me to paint in the first place.

What I really love about painting is that the more I work on something, the more times I have to go over and over the same section of the painting, the more I see- a mesmerizing world of shapes within shapes, unfolding slowly in changing patterns.

In this way painting is like meditation- it can be a meditation on the world of nature, or humanity, or simply colours and shapes and the texture of the paint. Not every painting has that sense of meditative reflection in it, because artists paint for many different reasons. Yet for me, it is what I am most attracted to when I look at paintings in an art gallery, and it is what makes me want to spend my life creating my own. It is a state of being that is not easy to put into words. It just is.

Thinking about Colour Palettes

Here are some colour palettes I have been working on in the colourlovers website, which gets me looking at colour combinations in new ways, as they can be applied to paintings. You can see way more on my colourlovers page.

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Lately I have been thinking about colour a lot. Sometimes I think I have already thought everything there is to think about colour, and I have reached the end of the line. Then, something surprises me. Once, on a boat trip down the Yukon river, I was waiting for something worthy of photographing to appear, such as a bear on the shore, or at least a stand of aspen trees in bright autumn gold. My friend beside me said “wow, the cliffs are so beautiful!” but… I was thinking… they look like cliffs! We were looking at only bare walls of rock rising straight out of the water at that point. I knew then that she was right. I had not appreciated all those subtle, warm mineral hues enough before that, because I was so focused on looking for the kind of subjects, or colours, that I thought I liked, or thought I was supposed to like.

It seems to me that artists tend to limit our palettes towards certain habits or preferences. This is good and bad. It’s good that inevitably with practice, we develop our own style, and express our individuality. From an art as career point of view, that would appear be a good thing, because you want to be recognized for your style. It’s also natural, especially for women who are taught these things are important, to lean towards the colours you know are your friends. For example I know I look better in bright or dark colours in the blue to red range. I could not walk around holding up a picture of yellowish cliffs to my face and not look yellow. Does that matter when it comes to the colours I choose for a painting? I don’t think so. It’s good to stretch beyond your comfort zone, because that gets you looking at things differently, and that is inspiring, and inspiration is really what art making is about.

In western industrialized society, we are also psychologically limited by the colours in the man made environment, and the objects that we see and use all the time. Now you may wonder why I say that, when such a variety of colours are available, even if the ones that are flogged most are changed from year to year. We are taught that it’s important to co-ordinate colours. The easiest and most obvious way to do this is to combine a bright colour with neutrals, or just stick with neutrals. Oh, sure, we have all kinds of neutrals, like brown and beige, but nine times out of ten, what do you see? Black, true grey, white, black, grey, black, black, and black. The effect is dependable, often fashionable, but it’s cold.

If you look at nature- really look, with unbiased eyes, which I know isn’t always easy to do, you see an infinite variety of subtle tones, as well as bursts of colour, such as flowers or the brightness of a sunset. Nature doesn’t limit itself. It is up to the artist to find in it- if painting nature is your thing- the colours that you want to paint, perhaps bringing some out more, and others less. I myself have tended towards a lot of blues and greys, especially in the last couple of years, when I was into “the atmosphere.” Now I’m inspired about finding ways to bring in more variety in the warm and earthy tones.

It helps a lot to have a way to play and experiment with colour independently of paintings per se. That way as an artist you can discover new ideas about what inspires you, and not feel limited by just trying to capture what things look like.

Copper Wire Rings and Funky Beads

I have been having fun making new copper wire and bead rings to sell at the Christmas mini bazaar. So, if you’re in Dawson City on December 3- although I realize no one is at this time of year who doesn’t live here, because others are afraid of freezing to death- but maybe some hardy local soul needs a new shiny ring for themselves or a Christmas gift. Here they are. I also have earrings, bracelets, necklaces, small paintings, and prints, including three new ones, that will be for sale at my table at the T.H. band hall.

I tried adding glass beads to one ring, and liked it so much that I made more with beads, until I ran out of wire. They look loose in the picture because I have small hands. I try to estimate the size for average hands, but most of the rings are adjustable.

Some people may be interested in trying this. If you haven’t done it before, all you need to start are wire cutters, small pliers (two pairs, designed for jewelry and available at craft store, are best) a cylinder shaped object, like a wooden spoon with a thick handle for example, and lots of copper wire. The wire comes in many different sizes that are available from jewelry suppliers. Twenty or twenty two gauge are easy to start working with and can be found at hardware stores, shh.

My designs are all very spontaneous. I find some types of art and design come out better with a lot of planning and sketching, but with copper wire, I just wing it. Some people may wonder how I manage to do that and actually come up with a lot of nifty designs, not just ugly ones or messed up tangles of wire. The answer is because I do- I screw up a lot, and then I keep working at it until I get into the groove. This means going through a fair bit of wire. Once a length of wire has been worked it doesn’t look good to re-work it, or it will come out all kinked.

Wire wrapping is getting a lot easier for me, since I learned a great tip: pad your pliers by gluing something to the gripping part, so the copper won’t be scuffed by the metal pliers. The pliers will also grip better. I haven’t found the perfect thing to use for padding yet. I thought it was supposed to be felt, but that got worn out too quickly. Then I pulled that off and glued on tiny pieces of moosehide- because, as a northern artist, naturally I have tiny meese in my apartment, er, cabin. They go with the snowshoes, and the canoe I always carry on my head. Anyway, the moosehide was also wearing out after a few hours of wrapping. Next time I will try smooth leather or vinyl. Then I will update this post when I find the best solution.

The wire should be wrapped tightly around a cylinder shaped object to get smooth loops for the ring- ideally a jewelers mandrel. Some other such object the thickness of a finger can be used (but not your finger, it’s too soft).  I do as many steps as possible with my hands rather then using pliers at all until it’s abolutely necessary; and then gripping the wire at the end with the pliers, not the middle. In this way the wire stays smoother looking and not over worked. To make the decorative coils like the ring on my thumb requires a specific technique and patience. I may do another post in the future showing step by step how a wire ring with coils if made.

If  you have copper jewelry that is tarnished and you want to brighten it up again: soak it in vinegar. It only takes a minute to remove mild tarnishing this way, or maybe half an hour for more serious tarnishing.  A funky blue green colour may appear that can just be wiped off with a rag dipped in more vinegar- then the pieces should be rinsed in water. Voila!

Practicing the Creative Reflex

Lately I have been thinking about how to nurture and energize artistic inspiration. I believe inspiration is a very personal thing, so I don’t have an all encompassing one size fits all formula. I have found it to be a lifelong process of evolution, discovering and finding ways to express through art the things I value, while developing my skills as a painter, and building on my work of the past to create my personal style. All of that is pretty labourious, but it is important for someone who is really focused on their art form.

Yet I have found there is another aspect of inspiration that does not necessarily need to be labourious and does not even require much talent or skill- in fact it seems to be most energizing when practiced in ways outside of painting in which I have little talent or skill, and therefore can’t take myself too seriously. It creates a habit that can then be applied to the process of creating a painting. It may be something that can benefit all kinds of people, not just artists. It’s what I call practicing the creative reflex.

Not every task in life can be done creatively, because it would become really inefficient. Instead of putting my boots on my feet to go outside, I would be trying to put them on backwards, or on my head, and never get anywhere. Yet there are many small ways, every day, in which creative ideas can be tried out, and even if they seem to flop, the process often leads to new, better ideas- which is exactly what painting is like, except that a painting can take hours or weeks to complete. The creative reflex can be practiced in small ways that do not need to take up a lot of time, or involve too many cultural or emotional hang ups that often come up with “serious art”.

Children do these kind of things naturally. For example, putting cranberries and chocolate together just to see how it turns out, making a pencil holder out of popsicle sticks, or sewing two buttons on my toque, not for any logical reason, but just to see how it would look. This isn’t goal oriented behaviour and won’t advance my career in any obvious way. Yet it creates a habit that is energizing and spills over into productivity in painting.

If you contrast this kind of simple, childlike approach to the concept of artist as creative genius, perhaps you can understand the real value of it. I definitely do not wake up in the morning feeling like a creative genius, or even thinking “wow, I’m such an important artist, I can’t wait to get to work!!” People say if an artist isn’t considered a genius, they will probably have to survive by eating dirt and gravel, but maybe they will be really famous when they’re dead. How can anyone possibly know that, and does it really matter? Is this even remotely inspiring, or just a big, confusing head trip? Do people say to a welder or a plumber “gee you don’t get paid much for practicing your calling, but someone might make a lot of money off you when you’re dead, so cheer up!” No.

A couple of days ago in the morning I was listening to music and the bubbling of the coffee pot while sewing two buttons on my toque- a purple one and a small wooden one- and later I was able to finish the painting, above, that I had not been sure before how to improve-  “the Daemon Dragonfly” to which I added new elements using experimental techniques to make it a more interesting painting.

The Daemon is an Ancient Greek Spirit of creativity, which I first heard of in a very inspiring talk on TED by Elizabeth Gilbert. It’s the idea that everyone has a spirit of creative genius, kind of like a guardian angel that is external to the self.

In other words, as I see it, everyone can be creative, even in small ways- and in fact this had been an expression of our common humanity throughout history and all parts of the world.  Otherwise, we would just be surviving, eating raw meat and banging rocks together in caves. No wait, we wouldn’t even be banging rocks. Someone had to do that for the first time.

Pigments of my Imagination: Variations in Green

Now that our town is covered in ice and snow, this painting brings back good memories. On a perfect summer afternoon, before another rain storm blew in, I went walking with my digital camera and lucked out as many insects, including two butterflies, a dragonfly on a wild rose, and this bumble bee seemed to be hanging around posing. My camera has macro focus but not a lot of zoom. I was lucky to get so close to the bee, as I had a commission to paint a bee, and I really liked the idea.

When I started painting the “the Bee Man”, I was relying on cadmium yellow and indian yellow (an orange-yellow hue) for the dandelions, and also for mixing with other pigments, mainly cerulean blue, for the greens (I also used some phthalo green and other pigments for all those variations in the greens) . Now I have switched my cadmium yellow to hansa yellow, and my indian yellow to hansa orange, and I am happier. This is still a work in progress, that is close to being finished.

Do you ever lie awake at night, wondering what the difference is between cadmium yellow middle and hansa yellow middle? I never did. In spite of my experiments with the properties of other pigments, such as iron oxide red, a warm red that turns to a dull purple when mixed with white, I went through life assuming that cadmium yellows were similar but superior to hansa yellows because, well, they cost way more. And they’re carcenogenic, and well, that’s what I was told to use in art school, so there must be some reason or other.

Finally the cost of cadmium yellow middle went so high, I got fed up and bought a tube of hansa yellow middle instead. I mail order my paints before they actually run out, so now I can do a comparison test. On the top is cerulean blue mixed with cadmium yellow middle, and on the bottom is cerulean blue mixed with hansa yellow middle. All of the paints are Stevenson Acrylics- so the differences are entirely because of the properties of the pigments, not the quality or type of paint.

I know, they look pretty similar. The difference is that the mix with hansa yellow took a few seconds with a palate knife, while the mix with cadmium yellow took extra work and scraping just to get a mid green happening. In other words, it changed too fast from blue to yellow, even though I kept the amounts of paint the same. The other difference is that within the mid green range with hansa yellow, you can see lots of variation and clarity, whereas with the cadnium yellow there is a range that goes monchrome and chalky, that I circled in black. The hansa pigments are more translucent then the cadnium colours, so that may be why they behave differently. I think I may be ready to like yellow again.

Painting variations in green, especially greens in nature, is challenging. Understanding colour wheel theory is a good grounding in colour mixing, but it may not be enough because it doesn’t take into account that pigments are physical particles with various properties such as translucency or opacity, reflectiveness or chalkiness, and tinting strength relative to other pigments.

If you normally rely on phthalo blue, phthalo green or hookers green when mixing your shades of green, and you get frustrated because your greens all look so similar, it’s because you’re using some of the strongest chemical pigments there are, that quickly overwhelm whatever they’re mixed with, making it difficult to get subtle variations.

Try starting with a lighter blue such as cerulean, or a less bright blue such as ultramarine, and a yellow such as hansa middle. See what happens when you add earth tones, when you add orange, or when you add purple. You can still use those strong pigments for mixing deep greens in shadows. If you do pigment mixing experiments on paper like the one above, then you will find different strategies for mixing many types of green. Our eyes are attuned to perceive more variations in green than in any other colour.