Hooker's Green Watercolor, featuring Daniel Smith, Michael Harding, Sennelier, MaimeriBlu, etc

First!

I like your description of the Holbein Hooker‘s Green, it is rather obtrusively bright 😄.

My first Hooker's green was by roman szmal, and I loved it so much that I made the mistake thinking every brand has the same mix for Hooker's green 😅 it's unfortunate they only have their paint in pans but it's helpful to see that Michael Harding's is similar roman szmal's

Liking the Roman szmal and your blends. How close was your Mh hookers mix (was it approx 1:1?) to the actual michael harding hookers? Also a striking demonstration of why following the brands’ choice of name for their mixes is much less important than learning/knowing the pigment numbers and the pigment combinations in those mixes. Ty.

T Y Stivi for doing this one. After 20+ years of painting, I have never tried Hooker's Green. I don't even own any. I mix my greens, and the only greens I own are PG7 and Aquarius Green by R.S.. WOW what differences there are between brands of Hooker's Green! My favorite was the one you mixed. My favorite green is still PO49 + PG7.

Wow, what a difference a brand can make. I liked the mix you did the best, followed by WN & DS. Thank you so much for doing this, it saves me from making an expensive and annoying mistake.

I’m usually not a fan of green colors but I loved the hue you made. It was beautiful and I loved all the rest of them except Holbein’s and Daniel Smith. I think I would buy any of them.

Patty-I loved this. I am going to get this color in Sennelier, Holbein, and WN. These are the brands shown that I will have access to that are affordable for me. Thank you for sharing this with us.

WN did it for me, I have alo heard they were first to formulate Hooker's Green. All were beautiful, stunned to see so much difference between the brand's!!

Will you be sharing your painting project that you mention? If so, where? Thanks 🙏

Wow! What a difference the brand makes with Hookers green. Different choices for different projects. My favorite was the one you mixed though! Great video! Thanks again!🎨🖌️☀️🌙⭐️🌎

Daniel Smith, Sennelier and Holbein. Your blend was beautiful. The others not so much. Thank you for this comparison. Very enlightening. I do have the Daniel Smith hookers green. ❤

The Maimeri hooker's green is the same pigment as chrome oxide green (I've been looking at getting it myself!)

Thanks so much for the comparison, it's particularly useful when there's broad interpretation and multiple pigments used by paint makers. I haven't used Hooker's green in years, but thought the Michael Harding (a new brand for me) color was lovely and the MH and DS looked like they had the biggest range from dark to light, actually all the swatches look like useful greens. I really appreciate you making your own mixes!

The Roman Szmal HG is lovely, but I don't remember PY150 Nickel Azo Yellow being New Gamboge and don't think it was around in Hooker's time. Modern New Gamboge used to be PY153, a much warmer, leaning orange, yellow than PY150 (after the tree derived version of Gamboge became unavailable. Pease let me know if my memory fails me on this matter. RZ HG looks more like a nice sap green to me and it's also pretty easy to mix Prussian Blue with Nickel Azo Yellow or New Gamboge for a variety of greens, NAY and NG are both useful mixers. I'd imagine that Winsor & Newtons is probably closest to the original since WN has been making it since Wm Hooker's time in the early 1800s (though before phthalos were available).

Wonderful almost meditating approach to the variety of just Hookers green. Thank you very much.

Roman Szmal and Michael Harding are my favorites!

very nice video. i really wanna get my hands on holbeins hookers green, especially after watching. its just impossible to find here

I brought a Blockx hookers green and it’s very different to any other hookers green. I have a Sennelier one and a Winsor Newton one that are very nice that I really like more

I love the way you painted nice long swatches and edited this video. These greens were a feast for the eyes. W&N Cotman was my first Hooker's Green so I tend to prefer that shade. It's close to their professional version, but a little more blue and a little more muted.

Wow! I had not realised there was so much difference in the brands of Hooker’s green. Btw you always choose the perfect music to your videos. 😊

Your mix at the end is a TRUE Hookers Green 🎉. So rich and vibrant and oh so elegant ❤. Also you reaffirm the importance of quality watercolor paper. So fascinating. Thank you for the time and care in your swatching 🙏

Fabulous video. Thank you. My favourites are Roman Szmal & Michael Harding. Really enjoy watching you swatch out the colours.

MaimeriBlue is definitely Chrom Oxide Green. I was surprised. At least a very rich vesion of this colour.

I really liked your new gamboge and Prussian blue mix 😊

Aha!😊

Thankful New Gamboge is no longer made the original way. The other substitutes work just fine. Even a Mars orange with it’s granulation and a blue either Viridian or Phalogreen bs is beautiful.

Maimeri blue looks like terra verte mixed with green chromium oxide. Not ugly, but really strange.

To my eye, the Roman Szmal is the most stunning. The Windsor Newton would be the second one that I am drawn too, on the hot pressed paper, it seems to have some other colors swirling around in there.

PS. I JUST left a (long) comment on your PY129 video. I saw that I had missed this one. I came to WC from traditional Chinese painting, using mostly very old, organic, many mineral pigments. While I did plenty of “practice” paintings with my Marie’s and newer paint Chips..I fell in love with the single pigments. Now, almost my entire collection of Western watercolors are single pigments. I’m older, on a very small fixed income, but have found that just buying 2-3 tubes of single pigments/mo, (AND my eldest daughter, and best friend and I share and make pans for each other. In recent months I’ve actually been mulling some of my own. (My favorite, which I just got more of, is PB33, Manganese Blue…there’s just no other blue I’ve seen with it’s stunning vibrancy and the MIXES it makes are..incredible!
Hookers green has always confused me because, as you show..they are all over the place. My best friend, a retired art professor actually thought my PB33 + PY150 made what she always thought as hookers green. I ALWAYS prefer as few pigments in the mix as possible…but compared to yours…I think I need a warmer yellow..my PO49+ PB33 is closest to M Harding or probably closer to RS. My only issue with that stunning green..I get a halo. I WAS able to do one painting a few weeks ago..something different in the amt of water..,I haven’t figured it out yet..my friend thinks it’s because I made it with PB33 that I went back and mulled it one more time. As much as I love granulation, sometime separation; I prefer smoother, less granulating colors these days. You also gave me an idea! I have a chunk of gamboge up in my cabinet…it was a part of the large box of pigments my (now) 96yr old, beautiful, feisty first tutor sent me from China. She had taught here in the US for 30yrs before retiring back to China. Her successor here had also sent me another chunk of gamboge which I gave to my friend. My daughter was too afraid of all the precautions I take with my most toxic paints…and Lili (my tutor in China), asked my daughter when she was here last year, to go look at my large chunk of gamboge and describe it to her. I was in the other room, but heard what was going on..I told my daughter she was about to learn some “4-letter” Chinese words. If ANYTHING will motivate you to paint more, it’s a 95yr old Chinese great grandmother setting a fire under your butt with Chinese swear words. Gamboge molds when you don’t use it or spray it down with 90% alcohol every day. 14yrs ago after my late son informed me I was going to learn Chinese calligraphy, MAYBE painting…he put Lili on my video chat (he was in China), a month later I had my first box of supplies. Several months after that came some pigments and the thinnest handmade paper I had ever seen (sized xuan, also known as glass xuan). Shortly after that, my “gamboge inspections” began. “You’re not getting anymore of my supplies unless you prove to me you’re taking care of them and actually USING them!” 😂. Although Lili’s health began failing-as did mine, we’ve still kept in touch every Holiday when their family gathers and we have a video call. When my precious son passed away suddenly 2 years ago; it was on a call with Lili and her family that my eldest (the artist), my best friend and I decided that CJ’s legacy was ALWAYS bringing people of different cultures together, emphasizing our similarities and educating each other about differences.(several days before his stroke in Florida, he was celebrating finally getting his return VISA’s to China and Nepal. He called me and asked me “mum, is it a sin to put LaoGanMa crispy in Chicken Tikka?” 😂. He LOVED cooking huge multicultural meals for friends and family. That evening he was mixing Chinese, South Pacific, Nepali/Indian and HIS version of southern fried seafood in beer batter with hush puppies made with beer..greens cooked with ham hocks, and cheese grits. 🤷🏼‍♀️. ONLY my Prince CJ would make a meal with hot pot, BBQ, Curry and Southern Soul food.
Anyways, we decided to bring his legacy into our art and I began learning more about Western WC, and experimenting with ways of using techniques and materials, fusing East & West. The only thing I absolutely can NOT get used to is Western brushes. I’m spoiled. Lili sent my son to go stay with a professional brush artist for 3 days to quell my fears of any critters being harmed. (Except for the rats which are trapped and euthanized “humanely”. It’s a necessity in cities with 50 million people for safety…AND it’s a great extra income for the trappers! But everything is a reciprocal, beneficial process between farmers, ranchers, animal carers and brush artists-it’s an intangible cultural heritage, mandating strict oversight and adherence to practices in place 1000 years ago! This is ONLY for the REAL brushes made in China. Unfortunately..MANY copycat factories have sprung up around Southeast Asia that, obviously, aren’t governed by the ICH Act. 😔) My favorite brushes are 2 made when my son was there, both from the spring trimming/shearing of the artists pony and goat. (I later got many more from that artist and Lili…I’m saddened that I “loaned” so many out…never returned. I just hope they were put to good use)
Ok, enough of an autobiography..this old lady needs to get busy..it’s 2am and I have things to do!

AWESOME, as usual darling! I'd have to say my favorite three are, Roman S., M. Harding, and YOUR mixture (honestly.... loved it, with the red tone and without). I own almost all the Holbein watercolors, and you know I haven't picked up their hookers green in AGES. When you swatched I was like, "holy crap...what the?", you know?! It was so fluorescent, but Holbein is like that aren't they? Their palette is just different, maybe geared toward Anime, Studio Ghibli. But I know they're not basing them on their traditional Asian pigments of old, which are still around, I own about twelve of them.
Anyway, which way do you lean Stivi, is it toward the darker hues like Roman and Harding, or the middle like Winsor and Smith, or the ultra-funky bright ones? I got to add too, my lord help them, but the Maimari Bleu was just SAD! oh my lord...gosh. I hope it isn't most people's favorites. I wonder what made them go that route, considering the fact that so many folks love their tubes. I've yet to buy from their line but was thinking of getting the Jenna Rainie set to try it out. I think it is less than forty dollars on Amazon USA. Not bad for six colors, I think.
Thank you Stiv,
James

I still think your hookers green was the best!

Yay, you just saved me some more money! Definitely my new favorite channel! Thank you! ♥

My first step up from student grade paint was a pink tin of Paul Rubens water colors. I fell in love with their Hookers green. None of the bright spring hookers felt the same. Your video had me considering Roman and MH. Then you demonstraited the blended hookers at the end. Thank you! That was the most beautiful of all!
Deb in Montana

Wow that was dramatic. You can definitely tell which one uses phthalo blue in their formula. The RS impressed me like a green gold that can go deeper. I found the tonal range of the MH impressive as well. The luminosity of the DS, Hol, and Sen was gorgeous. The Mblu, I'm not sure what's going on there, but still interesting. Your MH mix was lovely. Another great video. Have a beautiful day.