Mixing Greens

In summer landscapes, knowledge of how to mix greens is essential.  Nothing is more boring than seeing sap greens everywhere in the painting. 

Mixing greens requires one basic fact:  blue and yellow make green.  I usually start by painting a wash of various yellows.  In this case I used cadmium yellow,  and yellow ochre. (Yellow ochre is an opaque color and does not work well when glazed over other colors.) I then painted varieties of blues and purples mixed with yellows and even burnt sienna on the palette and quickly dashed in while the first wash was still wet.  This wet-into wet process was especially important in the foreground where I wanted the grass to be softly out of focus.  Trying to recreate single blades of grass is a mistake many beginners make in an effort to be accurate.  Decide where you want your center of interest and avoid textures in places that would draw your attention away from that area.

The foreground greens are warm.  As the foliage reaches the shore further back, I switched to more grayed greens.

The foliage on the trees  transitions to blues which are grayed with burnt sienna or a touch of red mixed on the palette.  I kept the washes simple, only resorting to textures at the edge of the shape.  Painting individual pine needles is a futile exercise. 

Since I wanted the emphasis to be on the trees, I paid close attention to the following:  the intervals between the trunks,  the contrast in the values of the trees and the variety of straight and curvilinear trees.  Attention was paid to the light trees by painting the background tree shapes negatively.  And for goodness sake, please remember that most trees are not brown.  The birch trees are white with blue-gray shadows!  The tree on the far right is a grayed pink with blue cast shadows on the lower half.  The dark tree on the left is not straight brown, but a mixture of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, with very little water.  Don't be timid with your darks!

One hint:  while you have a certain color on your brush, dance around the page with it.  This gives a color unity to the painting.

Variation is a must when painting greens.