Mixing recipe
How to mix sap green
Target
#507D2A
Recipe mixes to #517D2B
A tube of Sap Green is often too raw straight out, and a lot of brands' sap greens lean in different directions. This mix rebuilds it from Cadmium Yellow and Ultramarine with a part of Sap Green to set the hue. The match is within a quarter of a ΔE.
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 3 parts Cadmium Yellowpile #FFD500
- Work in 2 parts Ultramarine Bluepile #346942
- Add 1 part Sap Greenpile #517D2BStrong tinter. Add it in knife-tip doses and mix fully before adding more.
A simpler mix
If you already have a Sap Green you like, Ultramarine Blue with Sap Green at seven to five gets within a point and a half. It is a bit cooler and bluer, closer to a sap green in shadow. The three-paint mix has more yellow in it and is better for sunlit foliage.
What goes wrong
Cadmium Yellow is opaque and Ultramarine is transparent, so after the second step the pile looks grainy and uneven until it is fully worked. Mix it through before judging. Sap Green is a convenience mix with a phthalo in it, and it pushes the pile harder than its one part suggests, so add it last and in halves. 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.