Whitaker Green

[Lacey Lewis]

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?

[Steven Sweeney]

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.

[Lacey Lewis]

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.

[Steven Sweeney]

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.

[Lacey Lewis]

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!

[Steven Sweeney]

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.

[Lacey Lewis]

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.

[Debra Norton]

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!

[Richard Budig]

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.

[Lacey Lewis]

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