Introduction
Artists probably heard this tip “Never paint with the paint straight out of a tube.”
This is true, especially for green colors.
For landscape that has trees, grass, forest, woods and so on, we tend to use the green colors directly because our brain tells us those things are green. However, the color in a natural feeling landscape painting may not have that much green than you think. I’ve noticed this with my landscape studies. And I hope I can explain my point of view in this post.
Leaves color
First of all, it is important to understand why leaves change color before I go any further. During fall season we can see all colors of leaves. When chlorophyll breaks down, the common green color disappears. What chemicals left make leaves turning into yellow, orange and red. And these are the essential undertone for “green colors”. For a natural feeling landscape painting, a yellowish or orange red underpainting can be very helpful than only use green and white.
Common green colors paint
I usually use these three green paint, phthalo green yellow shade, phthalo green blue shade and sap green.
Color demonstration
For this demonstration, I will use this landscape coloring page and Corel Painter digital water color brush. Digital software is more convenient for this purpose and the theory applies to all type of paints.
1) Phthalo green yellow shade
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As shown above, one layer of phthalo green yellow shade along is dull. But adding warm tone underpainting makes it more interesting. Same as the phthalo green blue shade and sap green.
2) Painting with warm undertone
Next I add a little shading details for this landscape coloring page. On left side it is the warm tone underlayer with rich yellow on grass section, pale yellow on tree top and orange red for shadows. On top of that I add a layer with phthalo green yellow shade. You can see the yellowish color makes the landscape more natural than painting with green and white only.
3) Colors in landscape photo
This landscape photo looks like green, feels like green, but non of the vegetation is green green. If the landscape photo involves sunrise or sunset lighting, it would have more yellow orange colors on plants.
Summary
The conclusion is never use green color alone to paint landscape or vegetation.
The natural undertone for green plants are yellow, orange, red and brown, just like autumn leaves. Sometimes you may use tons of yellow paint and just a pinch of phthalo green.
A pinch can be enough. 😂