Mixing recipe
How to mix hunter green
Target
#355E3B
Recipe mixes to #365C36
Hunter green is a dark, slightly warm green, the color of a wool coat. The base is Ultramarine Blue with Cerulean to lift it, and a single part of Sap Green that turns the blue pile green. The ratio looks blue-heavy because it is: dark greens have far more blue in them than yellow.
The recipe
Step by step
Build the pile from the biggest, lightest component and work toward the strongest tinter. Check the pile against each swatch before moving on.
- Start with 8 parts Ultramarine Bluepile #363258
- Work in 3 parts Cerulean Bluepile #303A86
- Add 1 part Sap Greenpile #365C36Strong tinter. Add it in knife-tip doses and mix fully before adding more.
A simpler mix
Cadmium Yellow and Ultramarine Blue in equal parts gets to a good match with two tubes. It comes out slightly more blue-green and a touch lighter, with a cleaner look. Use it when Sap Green is not in your box; the three-paint mix is a little deeper and warmer.
What goes wrong
The mix stays blue through the first two steps, and the green only arrives with the Sap Green. Trust the swatches and do not add yellow early, or the pile ends up at sap green rather than hunter. Sap Green moves this mix hard for its share, so go in halves and stop as soon as the pile matches. Sap Green (flagged by the mixing guide as moving a pile hard for its share) is the paint to be careful with here: it goes in last, a knife-tip at a time, and a little too much cannot be mixed back out.
Related colors
Results vary with brand, lighting and medium. Acrylic dries a touch darker than it looks wet. Treat this as a mixing aid, not a lab instrument: it tells you which tubes to reach for and roughly in what proportion. Fine-tune the last stretch by eye.