Finally. Useful Greens.
We see green better than any other color. Not only does green occupy a large chunk of the color spectrum, but it’s also at the center of the spectrum where we see color most accurately. Green pigments give us access to roughly half that colorspace – mostly just the cool side of green.
This is why warm greens can only be achieved through mixing. This presents challenges in the studio, and especially out in the field. Many pigment combinations fall short at producing a warm, natural-looking green.
Finding the right balance requires careful adjustment and experimentation. And a willingness to start over. Until now, painters have had a tough choice between getting single-pigment greens to cooperate with their intention, or eschewing tube greens and mixing their own.
As a colorhouse, we have an arsenal of pigments and color mixing is our life’s work. We set out to create truly useful, workhouse greens and blues. Colors that work together, that party well with the colors already on your palette, and that give painters ideal starting points for capturing the landscape, floral still lifes, and all other natural colors between yellow-greens and blue-greens.
Built on traditional, bullet-proof, and versatile mineral pigments, they can do it all. Capable of cadmium-like opacity and yet easy to extend for glaze layers. Easily mutable in mixtures where you don’t want a color taking over your palette or your painting.
Our Useful Greens move diagonally through green in colorspace, from the blue-green cool of an alpine forest, to the deep, moss green of a forest floor, to the middle green of the understory or bushes, to the sunlit warmth and light of the forest canopy.
Our Useful Greens were also formulated with Indigo in mind. Use Indigo where you want the deepest blues of a forest or, tinted with white, the blues of distant mountains. Take your paintings further, faster and paint confidently with greens you can count on.
Finally. Useful Greens.
We see green better than any other color. Not only does green occupy a large chunk of the color spectrum, but it’s also at the center of the spectrum where we see color most accurately. Green pigments give us access to roughly half that colorspace – mostly just the cool side of green.
This is why warm greens can only be achieved through mixing. This presents challenges in the studio, and especially out in the field. Many pigment combinations fall short at producing a warm, natural-looking green.
Finding the right balance requires careful adjustment and experimentation. And a willingness to start over. Until now, painters have had a tough choice between getting single-pigment greens to cooperate with their intention, or eschewing tube greens and mixing their own.
As a colorhouse, we have an arsenal of pigments and color mixing is our life’s work. We set out to create truly useful, workhouse greens and blues. Colors that work together, that party well with the colors already on your palette, and that give painters ideal starting points for capturing the landscape, floral still lifes, and all other natural colors between yellow-greens and blue-greens.
Built on traditional, bullet-proof, and versatile mineral pigments, they can do it all. Capable of cadmium-like opacity and yet easy to extend for glaze layers. Easily mutable in mixtures where you don’t want a color taking over your palette or your painting.
Our Useful Greens move diagonally through green in colorspace, from the blue-green cool of an alpine forest, to the deep, moss green of a forest floor, to the middle green of the understory or bushes, to the sunlit warmth and light of the forest canopy.
Our Useful Greens were also formulated with Indigo in mind. Use Indigo where you want the deepest blues of a forest or, tinted with white, the blues of distant mountains. Take your paintings further, faster and paint confidently with greens you can count on.
The warmest and lightest of our Useful Greens. Canopy Green is the color of the warmest areas of a tropical palm tree. In color space, it is located where green and yellow come together.
In color space, it is located where green and yellow come together. Using the Munsell color system, we can identify the color space corridor where Canopy Green resides as the wedge between 10Y and 2.5GY.
Pigment: PY35, PY83, PB29
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 2, Semi-transparent
Color Temperature: Warm
The middle green in our family of Useful Greens. This is your mid-value, bulk green.
Ideal for capturing bushes, shrubs, forest understory, and foothills in the foreground. The colors found in a savannah or cactus. Chromium Oxide can get you close to this colorspace. But unlike Chromium Oxide Green, Bush Green retains greater warmth and chroma in tints.
Pigment: PY35, PY43, PB29
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 2, Semi-transparent
Color Temperature: Warm
The deep, warm moss green of the forest floor. Ideal for dark areas or shadows in trees and forests and other flora.
This is your go-to for blanketing the undergrowth and tucking the shadows in. Forest Floor is composed of our warmest shade of cadmium yellow and our warmest blue. Cooler than Canopy Green and Bush Green, but still very much on the warm side of green.
Pigment: PY37, PB29
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 2, Semi-transparent
Color Temperature: Warm
The coldest and bluest of our Useful Greens. The blue-greens of alpine forests, valleys, and distant mountains.
Useful in tints for distant foothills and mountains. Useful for evergreens and high elevation foliage, Alpine Blue-Green’s reduced temperature helps convey warm greens that appear cool through the blue of distance.
Pigment: PB28, PBr7, PW6
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 2, Semi-transparent
Color Temperature: Cool
A true, deep, indigo blue. Formulated to work perfectly as a rich blue to mix with our Useful Greens. Indigos formulated with modern pigments are overpowering in mixtures and too green…always landing at a minty green that’s easy to get other ways and too cool in temperature.
Our indigo is softer in intensity, so it works so much better with the colors already on your palette. We put time and effort into striking the right balance between mineral and modern pigments. By formulating our indigo with the earthy and moderate to low tint strength Ultramarine Violet and Raw Sienna, we give artists an indigo with more range and subtlety.
Our Indigo offers the depth of a chromatic black without overwhelming the palette, while providing easy access to smokey blue glazes when thinned. It also greys down easily in tints and is mutable in mixtures.
Pigment: PB15:2, PV15, PBr7
Vehicle: Alkali refined linseed oil
Lightfastness I, Series 3, Semi-transparent
Color Temperature: Cool
What artists are saying…
Jessica Pisano
“Afternoon Stillness I”
To paint foliage I typically mix a variety of colors together to achieve the different tonal values that I’m looking for, but with Gamblin’s new greens I’ve been using them straight from the tube.
Their Forest Floor Green, Bush Green and Canopy Green are out of the tube perfection for creating realistic leaves!
Michael Chesley Johnson
“A Mountain of Green”
I was rather pleased with how well these colors worked together—not surprising, since the palette is very limited and has mostly analogous colors.
I started with Canopy Green, a very light and warm green, and Bush Green, a darker but also warm green, scrubbed in the color thinly with Gamsol to achieve a little tranparency. Then I added darker passages in with Forest Floor Green, and for the very deepest shadows, I used Indigo. For the very distant trees, I used Alpine Blue-Green.
The sky required a very rich note, so I brushed in Cobalt Turquiose mixed with enough white to make it lighter than anything else in the painting, except for the Canopy Green areas, which I wanted to keep even lighter. If I felt some of the deepest darks were too much, so I lightened them a little, not with white, but the next lighter green on my palette.
Hazel Miller
“Summer Canopy”
When light shines through the trees overhead, the leaves emit a special glow that feels both cool and warm at once.
I was thinking about this phenomenon as I studied a photo taken at the Bill Jarvis Bird Sanctuary. When I got to work translating my photo into a painting, Gamblin Canopy Green captured this effect perfectly!
Jimena Agra
“Luna”
Indigo is my favorite way to paint the night. It has a subtle hint of blue, but it’s beautifully muted compared to other blues on the palette. I love using it to gray down other hues and create depth without overpowering the painting.
I used it extensively in Luna, where I wanted a soft, muted starry night so she could gently stand out. It’s a gorgeous color not only for night skies, but also in landscapes and even portraits.
These news greens are a fun new path to different greens that I see out in naturee esp plein air painting in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve also enjoyed putting them into my pallett in my botanical studio work.
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