You like green? I previously rounded up multiple versions of muted mixed greens, so now let’s look at a few bright mixed greens!
Colors
Da Vinci – Leaf Green
Formula: Phthalo Green Blue Shade (PG7) + Hansa Yellow Deep (PY65)
A very yellowy color, especially in the midtone and dilute. I know an artist who uses this as the basis for all her leaf colors, and it certainly does have the look of the sun through foliage. I can imagine this as a great underpainting for a mass of foliage, that you can then shade way down with dark greens and shadows colors.
That said, this is not my favorite color, nor is it one that I find hard to mix.
Schmincke Horadam – May Green
Formula: Azo Yellow (PY151) + Phthalo Green Blue Shade (PG7)
I discovered this color through Nikki Frumkin’s Drawn to High Places Schmincke palette through Art Toolkit, which I reminisced in the Neon Palette post.
While still being a “yellow green,” this is somehow a much cooler color than Leaf Green, and one I find much more pleasant. To me it looks like a green-eyed cat. The mixes are also cooler.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t have Azo Yellow, but I find this particular shade rather difficult to mix; you can see my attempts on the right where I mixed Lemon Yellow and then Nickel Azo Yellow with Phthalo Green and came up with much more yellowish colors more similar to Leaf Green above.
Like all Schmincke colors, I found I did tend toward overdilution and harsh edges with this one, but it’s texturally not as sticky or unpleasant as I have found some other Schmincke colors.
Holbein – Leaf Green (PY154, PG7)
Holbein’s Leaf Green is a mix of good ol’ Phthalo Green BS (PG7) with PY154, Imidazolone Yellow, a straightforward middle yellow. It falls somewhere between the DV and SH yellows above, not as oddly orangey as the DV one but not as extraordinarily cool as the SH one.
Conclusion
In general I find yellow-greens relatively easy to self-mix with colors that I keep on my palette anyway, so this is not an essential palette slot for me, but they are handy convenience colors for spring, cheerful and fun to swatch. Of these options, I prefer the hue of the Schmincke May Green, which I find the most unique and hardest to mix (at least without Azo Yellow).
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Schmincke Horadam – May Green, 5 ml tube: Jackson’s US