Color chart: greens

10/3: To the 4 or 5 readers I have left: this might seem like a cop-out, I know, but the amazement I felt on the previous night came back once I showed Dorothe some of the subtle color mixes I'd stumbled upon recently. I should have done some actual painting and not obsessed about colors, but I can see myself putting this off indefinitely; I felt it was important to do before I decide to switch to different colors. This chart doesn't deal with any triads of subtle greys etc., but the greens from my two yellows, two blues, and black (I found my tube of Mars black but the difference between it and the ivory black was almost impossible for me to discern, so this is the ivory - supposedly the cooler one). It photographed pretty accurately, albeit dark, except that the pure ultramarine has a freaky electric glow here.

TOR=transparent oxide red
PB=Prussian blue
UB=ultramarine blue
Blk=ivory black

The swatch with the asterisk is the dark woody green I wrote about yesterday (see below), and the second row is the range made using it - so actually making triads, with each yellow. In the upper right between TOR and UB is my darkest shadow mix, and you can sort of see the inky browns that they make.

TOR is similar to burnt sienna, but because of its transparency will mix differently with other colors. See here, at top, pure burnt sienna on the left and TOR on the right. Mixed with ochre, just below, they are nearly the same - though the TOR mix is more golden and not weighed down. At bottom is Prussian blue; with sienna it makes a nutty dark brown, which is nice but can be found other ways, while with TOR it somehow turns that incredible green, a new color with new possibilities.

The green does resemble Hooker's green, and I feel dumb now that I've looked it up: Hooker's is just a mix of Prussian blue and gamboge yellow. I wonder now though about Prussian being fugitive, and whether I should use phthalo.