Unraveling the mystery of how to make the color green the perfect shade you need, can seem like an intricate puzzle. The complexity lies not just in its creation, but also in recognizing the countless shades that exist even within a simple green landscape.
Green, while seemingly straightforward, boasts an array of subtle variations that often leave us wondering – do we truly understand the essence of this vibrant color?
Join me as we embark on an intriguing exploration of what colors make green and how to achieve the exact shade of green you desire. Also, don’t forget to check out my insightful video tutorial in the “How to Make Green” section below!
Discover what colors make green
At the very heart of it, blue and yellow make green when mixed together. However, there are many other different shades of green that can be created – using various different color combinations.
So, let’s take a look at what two colors make green in the first color chart combination below.
What two colors make green
How to make green (video guide)
Unleash your creativity with our captivating video guide below, where you’ll unlock the secrets of crafting an array of breathtaking green shades. Learn how to infuse warmth into your greens using the power of yellow. Embrace this golden opportunity to elevate your color palette — dive into the video now!
Color chart
In the diagram directly below, you can see that the yellow colors are all the same but I use a different shade of blue for each green color mixture. I simply wanted to demonstrate that although the basic formula of how to mix green color is quite simple – blue and yellow make green.
The blue colors listed on the chart above; ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, RGH blue and pthalo blue, all end up creating slightly different shades of green when mixed with cadmium yellow.
One could also use a different type of yellow such as cadmium lemon, yellow ochre, or naples yellow. However, there is no need to get carried away with different types of blues and yellows to make green at first. As long as you have all the essential paint colors necessary you will be set to mix a large range of colors.
If you haven’t yet… grab my FREE Color Mixing Guide for additional helpful color mixing instructions and techniques!
How to make the color green muted
When learning how to create the color green, it’s valuable to understand how to achieve different shades of muted green colors. Let me guide you through the process!
Mix green and red for a muted green shade
You can create a muted shade of green by mixing red and green together.
The initial green colors in the chart above, are the same as the ones we created in the first color chart. Except now we are mixing the greens we created with cadmium red.
You can see a slight difference between the shades of green that red and green make when mixed together, when compared to the shades of green on the left. The shades on the right are much warmer and not as bright of a green.
How to use complementary colors
Whenever you mix a color with its complementary color it will make it less of its own color. For example, whenever a green is mixed with a red, these two colors mixed make green a lesser shade of green. The opposite is also true, in regards to the color red and green make. When you have red and green mixed together, the red will be a lesser shade of red.
To unlock and get a better understanding of how colors work together, make sure to spend some time learning about the artist’s color wheel. Along with this complementary color wheel seen above, there are multiple variations of the color wheel that can help deepen your ability to mix colors.
How to mix lighter shades of green
It is important to know how to mix lighter shades of green for the situations in which you need them.
What colors make light green?
Mixing green with white is probably the easiest and most commonly thought of in regards to what two colors make green lighter.
However, you do not want to limit yourself to only lightening your greens with white. If you do, your mixture might start to look a little pasty and uninteresting as paintings that are mixed exclusively with white often look.
How to lighten green (with green and yellow mixed)
As rows two and three show in the color mixing chart above, yellow and green mixed makes green lighter as well. Cadmium yellow and green mixed together makes a lighter shade of green. While cadmium lemon makes a slightly darker-light shade of green. Both are great options for creating lighter shades of green. As a bonus, yellow ochre is another great color option, when experimenting with green and yellow mixed together.
Other options: naples yellow, cadmium green light
How to make dark green color
There are various instances where knowing how to create rich dark green colors becomes handy. Avoid relying solely on black to darken your greens, as it can make all shades of green appear identical. Instead, spice things up by experimenting with color combinations to discover how to achieve a darker green hue. So, let’s mix it up and create some captivating shades of green!
What colors make green darker
In the color chart above you can see several options for how to make the color green darker – dioxazine purple, pthalo green and burnt umber. Dioxazine purple purple is a great option for darkening green as it will make your green a cooler dark but not as cool as if it was mixed with ultramarine blue.
Making shades of dark green by adding a darker green to the color mix
In addition, pthalo green will darken your green quickly. The only downside is that it can be a very saturated color. So, you might need to mute the color a little bit with alizarin crimson.
How to make green darker with burnt umber
Lastly, burnt umber is also a great option for how to make dark green. Though, it will probably be more of an earthy green since your green is being mixed with a brown.
Other options: ultramarine blue, black, van dyck brown
Mixing warm green colors: chart
Temperature is important to all color mixing especially when it comes to greens. For example, when painting a landscape you want to be able to tell the viewer if it is a cold winter day or a warm sunny landscape. This is where paying attention to temperature in color mixing plays a role!
Color options to use to make warmer shades of green color
In the color chart above I show a few options of what two colors make green warmer when mixed together. Adding some cadmium orange to your green is a great way to create a warm green color. Yellow ochre will also make your green warmer, but will also make it more of an ‘earthy green’ as yellow ochre is an earth tone color.
Cadmium red is another great option for how to make green color warmer. Additionally, alizarin crimson will make green warmer but not as warm as cadmium red and green mixed together.
Other options: Naples yellow, burnt sienna, cadmium yellow
What colors make green cooler
Now that we have covered what colors make green warmer, we transition into mixing cool green colors. You can use this free color mixing guide as a helper tool for additional color mixing techniques.
At the top of this color chart is provence violet bluish – probably one of my favorite colors to mix green with. The result of these two colors mixed make green a subtle cooler green color. Dioxazine purple is another good option to make your greens cooler – especially if you need to darken your green at the same time.
Make green cooler using different shades of green
Veronese green is another favorite of mine to make a cool green with. It makes green cooler, while also creating a more saturated color. So, if you need a little more punch in your green – this is a good color!
Also, pthalo green is quite similar to veronese in that it can provide a lot of saturation to your green. In fact, it will provide even more saturation than veronese green! Also, it will darken your green at the same time.
Other options: You can also use blue colors to make green cooler.
Additional thoughts on how to make the color green
There will never be a simple formula for how to mix greens. Therefore one of the best things you can do to mix good greens for your painting is to spend a lot of time experimenting. The color charts above act as examples and show general principles in mixing different greens.
Get out of your comfort zone with color mixing
You will only ever be able to mix excellent shades of color, if you get outside your comfort zone and try out different color combinations. There unfortunately can never be a formula for every single color you will run into. This is impossible!
Ideas for working on mixing colors
Get outside and practice painting the shades of green in the landscape around you, using the mixing principles outlined above. However, also be sure to experiment with different color combinations until you get the precise green you are looking for.
Examples of how to paint with the color green
Here are some real life examples of green colors mixed together within a painting. Each painting is an example of how use different kinds of greens for different situations.
Green leaves of a rose
Painting various green colors of landscape
Whether creating shades of green for a still life of a rose, or a landscape painting, you will see that there is never really a simple formula for how to make green. Getting a certain color can take a lot of experimenting with mixing different colors.
Warm and cool green colors in painting
Here is an example of a painting that has a mix of warm and cool greens as well as light and dark greens. You will see that each color is mixed with quite a few different colors! Interesting and complex greens require mixing numerous colors together.
Exploring warm green hues in paintings
Here is a good example of a landscape with many warm green colors. Notice all the light warm greens around the landscape.
Stormy day landscape painting example
This painting has much darker greens than the other two paintings shown above. Notice that many of the colors used for the mixtures in this painting are dark.
How to make green color in conclusion
As you can see, how to make green is a world unto itself. There are endless ways of how to make different shades of green. The sky is the limit!
It is exciting experimenting with different color combinations you can mix together for your paintings. So look around at the different shades of green that are possible for inspiration.
And above everything else, have fun and challenge yourself as you work on mixing colors and how to make the color green!
Additional Color Mixing Resources
For additional color mixing ideas, here’s how to mix earth tone colors.
Also, you can learn about color shading and how to paint with color and light.
Want to remember this? Save this Green Color Mixing Guide to your favorite Pinterest board!
30 thoughts on “How to Make the Color Green – Shades of Green Color Mixing Guide”
I got my few questions answers here , thank you so much for your helpful and useful content
Glad to hear that, you are so welcome!
This color mixing master guide looks great and I couldn’t resist the purchase, just based on looking thru your instructions for making green. Clear, concise, and very comprehensive, with all the necessary visuals. Perfect for a beginner, whilst also offering tremendous potential for growth in deep appreciation for the complexity of this science and brilliant art. Absolutely fabulous! 🎨🎨🎨
Hi Janet, I am so happy to hear how much you are enjoying the color mixing master guide! That is wonderful – thank you for sharing that! I appreciate it very much. Wish you lots of happy painting and much joy with the color mixing process.
Hola. Muy agradecida de haber encontrado tanta información útil y tan bien explicada. Estoy intentando aprender a pintar en acuarelas y también con pinturas acrilicas para proyectos para mi hogar. He buscado mucho pero hasta hoy no lo habÃa logrado. Muchas bendicionescdesde Venezuela.
I am so glad that the information here is helpful! Thank you so much for sharing 🙂
Thank you so much for the thourough explanation.
You are so welcome Maria!
I just want to THANK you for this article, with so much details and information, it is the best that I read until now.
I wish you the best.
Maha
HI Maha, I am happy to hear that! You are so welcome, really glad this article is helpful for you 🙂
Elisabeth, your articles are JUST THE TICKET!!!! Very thorough and easy to understand, with plenty of “example” pictures to make it real. Thank you so much. Could you do one on translating colors into “tones”? I love how certain artists will paint a garden scene, for example, with a garden shed or house wall in it, and the wall might be a shade of violet, the sunlit spots a shade of peach….I don’t understand how to successfully translate colors into tones! You would know!
Hi Robin, So happy to hear that – thank you for sharing! Am glad to hear that this article was helpful and easy to understand. An article on translating colors into tones would be very good as it is a very important topic! I have one related to it already here – https://artstudiolife.com/painting-with-color-and-light-color-shading/ – that might be helpful! I work tonally with all of my paintings so watching some of my video tutorials on youtube might be helpful as well as I talk about how to start out in a strong tonal manner using color. Hope that helps!! 🙂
What is RGH blue please?
Apologies for my delayed reply! RGH blue is similar to cerulean blue 🙂
Your site is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you for doing this!
So glad to hear, you are very welcome!
Very well explained.
Thanks so much.
One question.. is cadmium yellow the basic yellow to use? I somehow have always used lemon yellow. Does that change the green colour created?
Yes! Cadmium yellow is basic yellow to use. Lemon yellow will create more of a lighter (and cooler) yellow color than regular cadmium yellow. If you are just using regular lemon yellow as opposed to cadmium lemon yellow than the color will probably not be as strong. I hope that helps!
Thank you for such important guide to all of us selftaught artist..we learn from you a lot….such a wonderful teaching.
…thank you so much.
You are welcome! I am very glad to hear that the information on the website is helpful!
What proportions needed to make one qt. Using yellow and blue.
I would use equal amounts of each. Whichever amount you are creating I would use an equal amount of blue and an equal amount of yellow. Since 4 cups equals 1 quart – I would mix two cups of blue with two cups of yellow. However, if you want to create more of a yellowy green than I would mix a little more yellow.
Thank You. Just the article I’ve been needing.
Glad to hear Patricia!
Thank you! Most comprehensive color mixing advice I’v seen.
I am glad to hear that it was helpful!
I’ve seen a few articles about greens, this one takes the cake.
I could probably do a totally green painting now.
This was an eye opener.
Thanks heaps !!
Dave M 😎🇦🇺
Thank you Dave! I am pleased to hear that this mixing greens article is helpful!
Never new there were so many greens in all my life and how to use them thank u very much, sort of a beggener.
Hi Linda,
Glad you came across across the article! Yes, is are a world of greens!