One Color Challenge: Green

Recently, a lot of art bloggers and YouTubers have been doing the One Color Challenge, where they create a work of art using one single color. But that's not all - they have to use EVERY shade they have of that one color. Today is St. Patrick's Day, so I'm focusing on green. 

Here is Sarah Renee Clark, using over 670 green colored pencils on a coloring page. 

 

And here is ADCArtAttack, using an unknown (large) number of green markers, also on a coloring page. 

Both of their results are amazing. It's incredible seeing their talent in action. 

I decided to do my own mini version by making a quick all-green acrylic painting in my sketchbook. I'm not a painter, so it would be a challenge no matter what colors I used! I wasn't sure how many bottles of green paint I own; it turns out the answer is 8. 

I can't express how much I like having all my paints displayed in the craft room. (Thanks again, Steve!) It would have taken forever to dig out all the greens from the bins I used to store them in. 

I only had 20 minutes before I needed to leave to get Trevor from school, so there was no time for planning my painting or second-guessing anything. When working with green, a landscape seems obvious, so that's what I did. I jumped right in with the dusty green and the leaf green. 

I used a stiff round brush to pounce two medium shades of green on, avoiding the central light area.

I used the darkest green to draw tree trunks and branches. Then I used a kelly green, plus some of the shades I'd already used, to add foliage to the foreground. 

That left me with a moss green and a citron. The trees got some moss, then I highlighted them with citron. Finally, I added some citron flowers in the foreground.

It's no masterpiece, but it was a really fun challenge. And, it's gotten me one step closer to my goal of filling a sketchbook. I'm calling that a success.