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Posted
Sort of khaki, really, isn't it? But yes, a useful mix, especially in landscape - another way of darkening green leaves is to mix a bit of red into your green (or just use a darker green) - that gives a more natural appearance than using brown or blue. A compromise perhaps would be to use purple, but that can produce some rather unattractive results, depending on so many variables (ie, WHICH purple, which green).
You could add a bit of white to that mix in Lucy's post, and it would be useful for all kinds of brighter features in foliage where a bright green wouldn't be right.
Posted
I'm rather fond of Permanent Mauve - it's been a useful standby in many situations; I've got an ancient tube of the Georgian oil colour version. Not so keen on Zinc White - there are question marks hanging over it in terms of brittleness and delamination, but I've used it, when I have used it, in upper layers only and haven't observed a problem yet; trouble is, such problems can take a century or so to show, and I shan't be around then. (At the rate we're going now, will the world still be around then......?)
I like the mauve because it's dark, subtle, and not jarring - as violets and purples can be, especially in certain lights. Agree with Seamas, too, that it's a great partner for Viridian.
Posted
Yes - on the whole it's always better to paint on rigid panels in oils than on canvas; and Zinc White (I like it too, because it doesn't kill colour as Titanium can; but then, I use lead whites, which are much better for the paint's longevity - just not so good for ours if inhaled or otherwise ingested - and also don't swamp the colours they're mixed with) makes painting on canvas even more of a risk in the long term than it is anyway. There's much on the web on this subject.
Posted
I can feel already that this maybe an unpopular opinion :D and it's not about mixing colours, but i find Unbleached Titanium to be a surprisingly useful colour, seems to work well as a sort of 'bridge' when blending on canvas between two other shades. And is a whole lot softer than Titanium white. Do I win the prize for most boring colour choice?!
Posted
Unbleached Titanium can be VERY useful - particularly as it's very good for painting the muddier elements of chalk, which abounds where I live. Do you use it in its own right (as I do) or as a mixer (or both)? Mixing White in acrylic (?) is useful too - great for bridging passages where you don't really want to alter the colour or tone too much: and Zinc is no problem at all in acrylic, it's only in oil paint that it has been found to cause problems. It's actually a very strange phenomenon - Zinc White in oil can produce metallic 'soaps', which render paint films unstable. But - there's a well known 19th century oil painting, by Millais (I think it's Milliais, anyway) in which he was known to have used considerable quantities of Zinc White in his underpainting: and it's just about pristine. There's still a great deal to discover about this subject. In the meantime, if you're going to use Zinc in oil, go for a rigid surface if possible if you want to be as confident as you can be that your painting will outlast your grandchildren.
Posted
Emerald green is a colour which varies a fair bit, because there's no one standard version of it. All I can tell you about is Rowney Emerald, and that's in oil not watercolour (ie, I don't have it in watercolour). It's useful when used in moderation, and particularly so if you were trying to paint lush tropical vegetation. It mixes with some other colours, but I found it produces rather muddy mixes .... which may have their place, but it's not a colour likely to brighten anything; and mixed with white it can be a bit..... well, it made me feel a bit sick, to be quite honest!
Somewhere, I have a Search Press book (for which, tee hee, I shall have to search) by ... I think it's David Curtis. anyway, it contains a very lovely watercolour in which emerald green, make unspecified, was used with a yellow to indicate foliage with the light shining through. The green was added, I think, to tint the yellow, and that worked well.
In short - your Viridian is a good mixer; Emerald Green needs to be used on its own, for its strength, or modified with something - yellow probably being best. It will mix, but - well, I have bad memories of trying to.
Posted
Mine was in a drawer for a long time - it came as part of a set. Would I miss it if I didn't have it - no. But as I have got it, I've found it has its uses. I don't think it's a necessary colour, even so.
Yes, (Seamas) Emerald Green used to contain arsenic - it's said that it was the use of emerald green in his wallpaper, in a humid environment in which it leached out into the air, which killed Napoleon Bonaparte. How true that is - don't know; there was certainly a lot of it found in his remains. But arsenic hasn't been used in emerald green for a long time now, and it is indeed a mix of several colours, varying between makers, which don't always make for a very happy experience if you try to mix it with other colours on your palette, bearing in mind every additional colour you mix is a step towards black.
To be honest, I'd avoid it, on the whole - it's use in painting veg, as Fiona wants to do, is very limited: but it might add a touch of interest to, say, an exotic pot plant's foliage - maybe the leaves of a cyclamen, just for a touch of brightness where the light hits, against a darker green. I'm not sure I'm not really just trying to justify the hue's existence, though, really!
Posted
I checked online Fiona. Your paint is a mixture of Zinc White, Phthalo Green, and Azo Yellow. :) I must say though, a green is not necessarily a "pre-mixed" colour. Every colour can exist as a primary. I know its hard to change how you think about colour when you've been working the same way for so long. But a Phthalo Green will always come in handy if you feel youre B+Y green lacks intensity. And as Ive shown before it also comes in handy when you don't want a Blue pigment on your palette for what ever reason, and you can mix amazing blues as long as you have a nice violet on your palette.
An example of why you wouldn't have blue on your palette - the subject you are painting has super intense greens and violets, but the blues are very understated and soft. So when choosing your primary colours you go for green and violet, instead of blue, yellow and red. The mixed blue will automatically be closer to what you need as it will be less intense than a primary blue, and you have your intense greens and violets there, that are not obtainable by mixing blue and yellow or blue and red.
I hope that made sense. :P