Whitaker Green
 

I have seen a nice, soft green used in the background of some of Whitaker's paintings, and have also heard it called "Whitaker Green" by other artists. I thought I saw the formula for it somewhere, but now I can't recall it or where I think it was.

Does anyone here know how to make this Whitaker Green? ;)

I'm not sure if you're referring to a pigment that you're going to have on your palette, or a color you've seen depicted in others' paintings, but your mention of a formula suggests that you might be thinking of the one that Michael Georges posted in this thread.

Thanks Steven,

That may be what I was thinking of, and where I got the "Whitaker Green" label. Hmm...

Does anyone have any idea how to mix something like this on my palette? I may have something similar that I mixed with raw umber and winsor blue, but would be interested in other mixtures that make a nice, soft green background color.

You used to be able to get a futon cover in "Whitaker green," but apparently no more. (I feel the wind of the wings of legal eagles.)

As for nailing the color for your palette, I'd just go about it as with any other, starting with your best guess and then incrementally adjusting for value, hue, and intensity. The problem with the "formula" approach is that even a soft, nondescript background is going to require subtle adjustments to any formula, as would, say, a person's appearance in light require adjustments to any "flesh tint" formula.

Thanks Steven! I guess that my current mixture will be a good starting point for me. It does look a lot like the soft green that I am going for, but having experience with only a limited number of pigments I was interested to see if there were any popular mixtures out there.

Of course, the plus is that at the moment I am using pigments that I already have in my palette. Good for both the wallet and the unity of the painting. ;)

A "Whitaker Green" futon cover, I hadn't expected that!

The Whitaker has stated elsewhere on this Forum (if my brain's depleted ROM capacity is still returning accurate data) that he can pretty much use whatever paints are available to mix any pigment he needs. I've recently watched demonstrations by extraordinary artists who had reduced their palettes to black, white, and three primaries.

We've looked into this before on the Forum, long ago, but personalities got in the way of instruction. This is a good reminder that we need to consider the matter anew, to gather some insights into using available, limited pigments to mix an amazing array of color of the desired hues, intensities, and values. Once you start using black and white to create blues, or black and yellow to create greens, you're not only hooked, you're transformed.

I see. ;) I must admit that part of the reason for my posting has to do with greens specifically. I really am not fond of any greens that I have made from blue and yellow, and have not used one made that way in about a year.

The past several months, I have been exploring new pigments. I started off at first with white, black, and a warm and cool of each primary. Then I added some earth colors and was hooked. Now I am exploring more secondary colors and have bought a few tubed greens, a couple purples, and one orange.

The short discussion in this thread, and my recent encounters with the new colors I've been trying on my palette, have lead me to the conclusion that I can trust my experience, my gut, and my eye to arrive at an appropriate color regardless of the hues that I begin with.

I love color! Thanks for all the input and for the humor.

Lacey, have you tried naples yellow and ivory black? They make a nice greeny color and if you use more black it goes to the bluish side. I love playing with color too. I made a bunch of color mixing charts with the palette we use here at school and remember being amazed at the colors I came up with. It's great fun!

Jose Parramon may have your answer
 

Lacey:

A guy named Jose Parramon wrote a book called The Big Book Of Oil Color in which he outlines some amazing colors you can make using only Prussian blue, cad yellow medium, and alizarin Crimson and white. That's it.

I made every color he had in his book. It was easy, and I learned a heck of a lot about color. When you think about it, these three colors come close to cyan, magenta and yellow. The range and number of colors you can make from these three pigments is astounding.

You can find this book on some of the used book sites, if you're interested. Abebooks, ebooks, bookfinder, etc. Even Amazon has a used book section.

A really simple and soft green can be made from viridian, ivory black and white, with a tot of raw umber to neutralize the blue of the ivory black.

Thanks, Debra and Richard! I will try your suggestions. And thanks for the resources!

What a wonderful bunch of posts. All of you said it better than I can.

Play around with your colors. See what they do. The goal is to get to the point where you can mix any color you like without thinking.

Lacey,

At first I thought you might be interested in painting your studio wall with the same color, as I did. The paint can be formulated by Benjamin Moore according to the formula posted by Michael Georges in this thread:

http://forum.portraitartist.com/showthread.php?t=4393

Benjamin Moore & Co.
319-3B

UTC Gallon Formula
OY 3x20.50
BK 2x15.00
OG 0x17.00
GY 0x10.75


It's a fine color for a studio backdrop, and as far as I know it is the same wall paint in use in several well known artist's studios. As I said, I have this color on my walls. I think Mr. Whitaker does too.

For whatever it is worth as far as formulas go, here is the formula in Photoshop! I scanned the wall color with my Gretag-MacBeth Eye-One color spectrometer.

Now you have the Formula!

Garth

Ahh... Someday! I admit, I do need to move the paint around the palette a bit more.

The day I get a studio, or just a room to call my own, it will be painted this color or possibly the "mesa grey" I've seen in discussion on this forum as well.

LOL! I'm going to be giggling for quite a while over that one. :cool:

Seriously, though, thanks for going through all the trouble! Based on that, it looks like I could try out yellow ochre and black.

A very precious gem is buried in this thread - courtesy Steven - the possibilities of blue you can mix with black and white.

As an experiment, open your paint box and tint out each "black" you have stashed there into three or four values of grey. Make a chart so you know what's what tomorrow morning, and dab each line of mixtures onto a warm-toned ground.

For those working in this type of training protocol, where a monochromatic cast painting is slated, ivory black and white can in fact produce such an icy cold blue that you will be unhappy with the result if you do not add something like raw umber to warm it a bit. Otherwise it will appear that you submitted an entry in the St. Paul Winter Carnival's ice sculpture contest.

This tip was serendipitously and generously passed on to me, the advice of yet another (absent by then, on to bigger and better things) student, and it "saved" the piece I was working on. If you have a painting secret, give it away -- it will come back to you many times magnified.