What Colours Do You Mix to Make Green?

What colours do you mix to make green?  Who cares!  just buy bottles of green paint right?

Be honest, how many green tubes or bottles of paint do you have?

3, 6, 9?

Now, don’t roll your eyes expecting me to tell you that you can colour mix green to save you some money.

You can, but that’s now what I’m going to cover in this post.

Well, I have about 23 tubes, bottles and jars of various greens. Light, dark, bright, dull, blue-green, yellow-green etc. etc.

But if I’m supposed to be an instructor who teaches beginners how to paint and save money at the same time, why would I personally have so many greens?

I’d love to say “because I don’t throw anything out”, but honestly, I’m a tad lazy.  Sometimes it’s much easier to grab the paint that already has the mixes done for me.

A good example is Pistachio Mint, Sweet Mint and Teal Mint from the DecoArt Americana line.

They are super for backgrounds and for someone that just wants to paint and is not interested in knowing how to mix colours.  

It would take me a lot of time to mix up these colours while I’m painting and the fact that acrylics dry so fast, so why not use paints that are already mixed up for you!

So I ask you again…

What colours do you mix to make green?

The answer is:  “finding the right blue and find the right yellow”

Is that all it takes?  hah!  no way!

What about:

• how much of each colour do you need?
• what if it’s too bright
• what if it’s too dull
• what if it’s too light
• what if it’s too dark?

What colours do you mix to make green for portrait painting? oh yes, there is green in portraits!

What colours do you mix to make green for a spring landscape?  summer landscape?  fall landscape?

Are you overwhelmed yet?  hang on, stay with me.

Let’s say you’re just starting out with painting, but you don’t have a lot of paint.  Quick answer is to buy more, but it’s not the right answer.  

I bet you do want to save some money during the learning and experimenting process and at the same time, use good quality supplies because you know that cheap paint gives you cheap results.  am I right so far?

So let’s do a little bit of colour mixing to see the type of greens you can get.

First, I don’t know what paints you have, so even if you are using an absolute beginner set of paints, it’s likely you have blue, red, yellow, white and maybe black.

So here’s your 5 minute colour theory lesson in a nutshell.

• yellow and blue makes green
• add more yellow to make it brighter
• add red or orange (made with yellow and red) to dull it down
• add more blue to make it darker
• white or black will change the value (lightness or darkness)
• use a combination of two or more of the above for further mixes.

To make is super easy for you, I’m giving you colour mixing templates and access to a video at no charge.

You can download the free colour mixing template and print as many copies as you want for each type of combination.

Example:  

• if you have one yellow and one blue – one template is used
• if you have one yellow and three blues – print out 3 copies
• if you have two yellows and two blues – print out 4 copies

You can paint right on the printout and put it in a binder for future reference.  

Then take a peek at the video below which shows how to use the templates so you can answer the questions in the next section.

Create your mixtures and for each mixture, ask yourself these questions:  comparing to the primary green mixture…

• is it brighter or duller?
• is it lighter or darker?
• is it transparent or opaque?
• is it warmer or cooler

When you look at the mixtures, what kind of things in nature could these paint mixtures be used for?

Trees, grass, shrubs, leaves?

Look around and see how many different types of greens there are in nature.

Also, keep in mind that each mixture, even adjusting the mixture by a little bit, is a paint colour you don’t have to buy.