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Greens are good for you!
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Message
Posted
On the way home from art group yesterday my friend Nora commented that a portrait should always include a little green as a complementary colour to the red shades. I knew the Impressionists used to do that and were roundly mocked for it but I'd never tried it.
When I got home I took three of my portraits and added a little green in the shadows. My question is - am I doing the right thing? Before I do anything more I'd appreciate some advice from those who know a lot more about this than I do. Looking at the three pictures I'm very much undecided. 
Posted
Well now - here's a poser... Broadly speaking, yes: green does help to balance the warm tones, and a subtle green - not an acid one - has been incorporated in portraits and figure studies by many, perhaps most, capable artists. It was common - some still do it - to paint the face in terre verte with flake white or foundation white and then to glaze over that with coloured layers: I did that as an experiment many years ago, and it works: it works even with the Zorn palette. It's a bit harder if you're using Titanium white - in which most of us don't have a lot of choice, though whites are being developed all the time to give the quality of flake or foundation white without the rather syrupy oiliness of Titanium. Instructive to ask ourselves why the lead white works better - the reason is that it's a less glaring white, leading to subtle tones: and that's what you want to achieve in portraiture: usually - no hard and fast rules there, some portraits are anything but subtle, and still work. (See Dérain's work.)
Of your portraits - I realize they're test pieces - the central ones work the best; you and I have quite a history in discussing eye shapes so I won't go over that again - the one on the right, with touches of green, is the better of the two, but I would suggest mixing the green into your flesh tones rather than incorporating passages of pure green paint: terre verte, or dulled viridian, might work best - any desaturated green other than pthalo, which will run away with you and leave your subjects looking as if they're suffering from sea-sickness.
Marjorie Firth is one of our best portraitists on POL, so maybe she has a different take.
Posted
Okay Peter, here we go again. Briefly. Robert is right, green is the complement of warm skin tones so is used to emphasise the planes of the face and the shadow areas ( that’s if you use it in the first place…I’m not sure that I do). To see the planes and shadows you mustn’t look at a face full on, too flat. Slightly three-quarters is best, to have a strong light source. The Old Masters , Renaissance painters and such , often started off their portraits in green ( verdaccio technique) and worked on top - look it up. Not used that way much these days.
To use a dab of green is too simplistic. You need to study a face before you start ( I look for a fair time) to identify the various tones, shadows, planes. A young face is harder, the skin is soft, the planes not obvious.
I never use straight white for highlights, there’s always colour if you look carefully. Warm or cool the white before you lay it on.
Sometimes it adds harmony if you pick up the colours subtly in the background. I said I don’t think I use green…..well I don’t have a “ formula”, sometimes a mauve or a blue/ grey work in the shadow areas, all depends on “ atmosphere”.
Have a look at the images below, which I’ll add separately so as not to lose everything again! The contemporary paintings are obvious in their use of green, the others ( JS Sargent, Rembrandt, use it very subtly.) My own effort has some blue/ green passages. Then there’s Van Gogh…….
Edited
by Marjorie Firth
Posted
Some excellent portraits there (well done for persisting when you'd lost the lot and had to start again, Marjorie): of course, and as you'd expect, Rembrandt is the star of the show, and I think it's clear that he used the verdaccio technique in that self-portrait: you can see the green underlayer where it's been left or lightly glazed in places, and the probably stack lead white he used to create the complexity of the image, well representing ageing flesh: he won't have used a completely mechanistic approach, any more than Marjorie does: it won't have been as simple as laying down a tone in green and lead white, and just glazing over it, he worked back into the paint, sculpting with it, mixing his colours for each passage - but that underpainting then glazing and overpainting would have been the basic technique.
All of those portraits are instructive though, and while I had a friend who went out of his way to emulate Rembrandt - and came as close as anyone I've ever seen: sadly he's no longer with us - that's the highest possible bar to aim for. If you can find a copy of Draw and Paint What You see, by Ray Smith, there's a section on several portraiture techniques, a couple of which involve green elements.
Posted
I don’t paint many portraits these days, family mainly and the occasional SP and friends.
I do usually try and add a touch of green in the faces, but I’ve never given it much thought as to why I do, apart from the obvious complimentary colour - and it’s usually as a stand-alone brush stroke, rather than quietly blending in…
It can be used to break up the abundance of ochres/earth colours… and I’m rarely looking to achieve absolute colour accuracy to the sitter, that’s not how I want to portray them… a photograph is much quicker if that’s what I’m aiming for.
Here are a few examples by Tim Benson, NEAC, now a well established and much sought after artist, and an artist that I greatly admire, he only works from life, never from photos!
I can see hints of green in some of his positive and deliberate brush strokes. His style is very much in the style of Lucian Freud of course.
Edited
by Alan Bickley
Posted
I've had a play this morning hopefully learning from the above. On the left are the pictures of the girls from ABBA which I did a couple of weeks ago and on the right is one done this morning, quickly and loosely and not allowing myself to fiddle. I'm not suggesting they are good pictures but it has been an interesting exercise forcing myself to paint in a way that doesn't come naturally. Before you ask there is green in both of them! 
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