green, a creative color

Watercolor has really got me to appreciate the color green. It’s great for color mixing and feels like it has more versatility and range than other colors.

My usual greens:

1. sap green, a light earthy/warm green
2. hooker green dark, a moderately cool dark green
3. lime green [cerulean + lemon yellow], a highly vibrant light green. In different proportions, it ranges from turquoise to acid yellow.
4. spruce [hooker green OR viridian + rose]. In different proportions, this can also be steel or wine.

But the real fun is freestyle mixing. When doing a field of grass, or a tree, or leaves on florals, I’ll drop in a mix of sap green, hooker green, and lime green. Toss in some yellows for warmth. Maybe even some browns. Keep it uneven so there’s texture and character. It’s funny how my FR vibe is “I like cool greens, but not so much earthy/nature-y greens” yet when it comes to my own art, I like any and all greens, preferably a big mishmash of them.

You can also do neat stuff with underpainting. Sarah Cray’s latest calendar pic is a grassy field with a creek running through the center. She colors the creek first, in sunset colors reflecting the sky, letting the color liberally overrun the creek onto the shore. Then she colors the rest of the field in Q gold. Then she paints the grass green on top, but not fully covering up the gold, and the green areas have a warmth to them because of the colors underneath.

I’ve really been hitting my stride in terms of merging illustration with watercolor. Finding the balance of drawing and coloring while also giving watercolor room to be itself. Lately I’ve been watching some Melanie Mangold videos. She’s a mixed media illustrator who does a lot of work in pen + colored pencil + watercolor. I like her illustration style a lot—it’s whimsical and charming, like a children’s coloring book—but she tends to use watercolor just as flat color. None of the essential character of the medium. Still great doodle inspo though.