It’s not easy being green
Most of my colour swatches are attempts at making the right green. Looking back over them, it is clear to see green isn’t just green – there are so many variations. Depending on the landscape I am engaged with, the time of year, the light. Green is an incredibly moveable feast. It is one of those colours that funnily enough I am not that keen on as paint and I tend to use it sparingly
I have over the years been very surprised with the green rocks that I have found and used. Many of the these are difficult to mix with other colours and have been tricky to mix on their own (low pigmentation) and gritty to work with, so to get its maximum hue it requires a lot of pigment -which is a lot of work. Both the local green pigments available to me have to be extracted from rocks, which require filing or hammering into course grit, then grinding in a mortar before levigating. This is the case with the local Garra rock I have found on the coast and the green-grey marle I have found further inland.
Garra Rock-a very hard rock that requires a lot of graft to turn into a usable pigment. It is very gritty and doesn’t mix with gum arabic that well, and tends to curdle when clay is mixed with it to make gouache. Pigmentation is low
Reading up on green earths indicates that there is an abundance and variety of lightfast colour, which has certainly not been my experience locally. However, my rocks do have their uses. Due to its grey leanings, it makes a great glaze when mixed up with gum Arabic to make a watercolour, which can be used for subtle shading or to subdue an area.
using the subtelty of this green as a wash to subdue an area in a painting
The reason my green pigment might be lacking is perhaps due to it not been cleaned thoroughly. Aparently to get all the yellow ochre and other particles out, it needs to be chemically washed….
So often I have to mix up 2 pigments to aquire green.
My all time -go -to -green is TQ postern yellow earth, Italian yellow earth and India blue -a synthetic (see link below for supplier)
Variations on a theme -drop the Italian yellow earth and the green will be muted and soft
All- time fave is charcoal and TQ postern yellow earth for a gorgeous natural olive.
charcoal and postern yellow ochre
The brightest green I have made I used nasturtium lake-nasturtium gives an amazing bright citric yellow- and an electric hot green when mixed with India Blue and given it grows like a weed, I am happy to harvest with impunity. It is a botanical however and I have swatched it and put it in a sunny spot for months, and is certainly not archival! As you can see in the picture the one on the right has lost a lot of its colour.
nasturtium lake and india blue
Given that I am working mainly with gouache (watercolour and clay) in order to gain a sense of levity in my work I have to put colours together for maximum effect. The use of complimentaries can make your colours sing-say for instance, a pink sitting next to a green, or a stripe of sienna tucked in next to a foresty-darkness.
complimentary colours for maximum effect, with pop of oil pastel green
However, recently I had a find which I am very excited about. A friend who was out running spotted some bright green flecks of colour in a sunken lane where a small landslide had happened in the hedgerow after a significant amount of rain. She promptly texted me (don’t you love friends who understand your geekiness!) with amazing photos of this find. We returned to the site a couple of days later, and there it was, bright and very obvious. This was not the hard blue marle rock that is usually found in these parts, but rather lumps of solid crumble, which easily breaks down into earth
It cleaned up well and broke down to 180 microns easily. Also, unlike the marle it mixed with auxiliaries and water well without the grittiness and hydrophobic qualities of the rock, and green earths I have bought from Italy, and it is much more highly pigmented. What have I found? Is this Terre Verte?
Bow Creek Green-
Here are some great links for information and supplies of colour from around the world!
A book I definitely have my eye on!
For amazing info on terre verte, historical info on pigments https://www.naturalpigments.com
suppliers of pigments, clay paint and the famous but expensive wallglaze
