Terre Verte, also known as Green Earth, is one of the oldest pigments still in use today. It is a non-toxic mineral pigment made from green-colored minerals like celadonite and glauconite, as well as iron oxides. This is what a real mineral pigment looks like when it’s not enhanced (as the DS Primatek paints are) with stronger phthalos and things. A notoriously low-tinting pigment, Winsor & Newton’s Terre Verte (Yellow Shade) is hands-down the weakest color I have ever tested!
Experiment Results
Hue: Gray-green, kind of khaki or olive drab color.
Tinting Strength: I can’t emphasize enough how weak this color it is. TVYS is soooo weak.
How Weak Is It?
TVYS is soooo weak, I had to add a second gradient where I used fresh from the tube paint since it felt like I was just getting nothing from the dried paint, even after loading up my paintbrush 10, 20 times. And even the fresh from the tube paint doesn’t really get that dark!
Transparency: Transparent (or just very weak). WN says it’s transparent, but it strikes me as being the kind of pigment that would be semi-opaque if stronger.
Glazing: I mean, BARELY.
Color Mixes: I had to reaaaallllly water down my colors so they wouldn’t totally overwhelm the PG23, so they’re all very diluted. The only one I kind of like with Viridian (PG18), which incidentally is the mix in Winsor & Newton’s other ‘Terre Verte’ mix (only the Yellow Shade is plain PG23).
Comparison to Other Brands
I haven’t tried any other brands, but it does look from Kim Crick’s selection that there are some brands that are a bit stronger than WN. The smaller handmade brands may have more pigmented and/or offbeat takes. Still, it’s always a weak pigment.
What Others Say
Green Earth is in every single watercolor set I have.
Not even kidding. I even enjoy using it for monochrome paintings. I adore it on its own and always as part of an ensemble.
So, why do I love it so?
It is buildable. In other words: it has a low tinting strength. Indeed, this is one of the reasons I hold it dear. Watercolors are painted light to dark, intensifying as you go. So, buildable colors are very intuitive to paint with (while colors that have high tinting strengths and require caution and restraint can feel more fussy). I can use soft, subtle washes of it to map out my painting and then gradually build up leisurely layers as I develop volume and detail
Green Earth has the perfect hue. Right off the pan is matches landscapes and foliage. For this reason, I consider Green Earth a “base color”. I use base colors (usually natural Ochre and Earth pigments) as the foundation of most of my color mixtures, tweaking them with only very small amounts of higher chroma historical or synthetic colors. Add a dash of Orange Ochre to Green Earth to temper it to a later-summer green. Add a pinch of Quinoxalinedione Yellow for a more sun-soaked spring green. A swipe of Phthalocyanine Green will deepen it and punch up the chroma. But Green Earth is a pigment you can splash all over your landscape, using other colors to pull it in the direction you need.
Harmony. The fact that Green Earth is a natural pigment and mimics natures greens so readily gives painting landscapes with it a kind of harmony. Many natural pigments can give this feeling, which is one of many reasons why painting with them is so special.
Jess Greenleaf, An Ode to Green Earth (and Why You Should Be Using It)
Real Terre Verte is not so easy to use, it can not be mixed with other colors if you want a reasonably pure color as a result. It granulates heavily and is weak, in a color mixture you have to have double the amount of Terre Verte compared to other pigments to achieve balance. But it is so beautiful that this negative is outweighed by it. Mix with ultramarine violet for a beautiful gray color. Or use as it is for e.g. shadows.
Erik Lundgren
This gentle earth pigment doesn’t have tinting strength but I enjoy using it for natural stones, rocks and landscape studies.
Jane Blundell, Green Watercolor Swatches
My Overall Review of PG23
It’s an interesting curiosity but it’s impossible to use.
At least the way that I use paint. Most of the other colors in my palette are strong, so gentle colors can get lost. I also don’t tend to paint “light to dark” but instead blurry to defined, so my bottom layer is still pretty intense. I can see the value of a weak color for a bottom layer almost as an alternative to a pencil sketch, it’s just not the way that I paint.
Alternatives: If you want a khaki/olive green color, DS Undersea Green is a nice mix (using Ultramarine and Quin Gold, if you want to mix something similar yourself). If you want a single pigment muted green with an earthy look, I recommend Chromium Oxide Green (PG17).