How to Mix Light and Medium Greens for Acrylic Painting

Are your greens muddy? Does your green look too much like a lemon or have dark blue hues? You may be using the wrong colors. You know that it takes yellow and blue to make green, thanks to elementary school art class, but did you know that with the wrong yellow or blue you won't achieve the best greens? Sure, you can experiment with various shades of yellow and blue acrylic paints and achieve a range of greens. Experimenting with color blending is great. But you want some guaranteed green results, try these combinations to make greens.

Green Out of the Tube

If you want to have some back up greens in your acrylic paint box, you should own these green acrylic paint colors.

Viridian
Phthalo Green
Hooker's Green
Permanent Green Dark or Oxide of Chromium Dark
Permanent Green Light
Leaf Green

Optional:

Turquoise Green
Yellowish Green
Olive Green
Emerald Green

How to Mix Light and Medium Greens for Acrylic Painting

Play with different combinations of listed acrylic paint hues. Start by mixing the white with each individual color, creating light and dark colors. Five parts of white plus part of yellow will look different than four parts of white plus one part yellow. The distinction maybe slight, but as a painter it's important to know how to create these color subtleties.

Then mix the yellow and blue in varying amounts. Two parts blue, three parts yellow, three parts blue, three parts yellow and continue until you feel you have explored the array of ways to make green with acrylic paints.

Various acrylic paint combinations are provided, because you want to be able to make a variety of greens. Sometimes you may run out of your favorite mixing yellows and blues, or the acrylic paint colors you need are not readily available. Try these different ways to make greens.

Yellowish Greens and "Spring" Greens

Titanium White
Cadmium Yellow Light
Cerulean Blue

For a light spring green, the color of the first buds you see on a tree, mix equal parts of Cadmium Yellow Light and Titanium White with a speck of Cerulean Blue.

Happy grass green: try equal parts of Cadmium Yellow Light and Titanium White plus two parts Cerulean Blue.

Remember to explore the combinations between those two green hues, using your palette knife. White acrylic paint will help you achieve clean and non-muddy looking greens.

Light or Mid-tone Greens

For a wider range of greens, try mixing these acrylic paint colors:

Titanium White
Phthalo Blue
Zinc Yellow

Mixing white will give you the light spring greens, but leaving out the white and mixing various amounts of Phthalo Blue and Zinc Yellow creates mid-tone greens. Despite the strength of the blue, you will not end up with sea greens with this combination.