Watercolor Painting - How to Paint Greens

Catherine Hillis: Hi, I am Catherine Hillis and I am a Professional Watercolor Artist and I am teaching you how to paint in watercolors. Right now, I would like to talk a little about Green. We have a lot of Tube Greens, that we can use as watercolor artist. But the truth is that none of them look very realistic, rest of them are too garish. And so, I am going to give you just a little bit of a pointer on how to make your Greens, look more realistic when you paint.

I am going to show you some samples of some paint. First of all, I am going to show of a Viridian Green. So, when I paint the Viridian Green on the watercolor paper, that is not too realistic looking. Now, I have mixed a little bit of Quinacridone Gold into the Viridian Green and I think that, that is probably a better look, if you are painting leaves or stems. Now, what I'd like to do is show you another little trick, which I like to use quite a bit and that's using a little bit of rose or Red in my Greens and I almost always use a little bit of rose or Red. So, I am going to add a little Quinacridone Rose into that combination. And look at this, it's a beautiful, slightly Grayed out Green. Now, if you will remember, I was telling you that the way to paint Black in watercolors is to use compliments.

So what I have just done is I have use a little bit of the compliment to Green which is the Quinacridone Rose and it was just enough to Gray it out. So, if you will see the difference here, we have the Viridian Green which is quite garish and not at all realistic, but it's a great color. And here we've added Yellow to Viridian Green and here we've added Yellow and just a little bit of Quinacridone Rose to the Viridian and look what two great color combinations we have to use here and they both make a much more realistic Green than the Viridian straight out of the two.

Now, this process will work on all of your Greens. You can use Yellows and Blues in your Greens but I recommend, almost always use a little bit of Quinacridone Rose or an Alizarin Crimson and I think you will see a big difference in your Greens. Now, I am going to paint with permanent Green and show you, how that color is really too garish to use and I am going to show how to tone that color down as well. Permanent Green, I am going to paint a diluted rectangle of permanent Green and look at this color. It's a beautiful color, but it's just really too bright to be considered a really realistic for leaves or stems. So, I am going to put a little bit of Quinacridone Gold in this color and let's see what's happens there, much better. You can also add a Blue into these colors into Green to make them a little more realistic looking for watercolor painting. That's a lovely color! And then I am going to add a little rose into this, just you can see what happens. So, here we have permanent Green with Quinacridone Gold and Quinacridone Rose and isn't that a wonderful color for leaves and stems. I think you will agree that putting just a touch of rose in your Greens, will make them look much more realistic. And next, I am going to show you how to make a round object come to life through using multiple glazes.