Foliage Light Green

The green of the first weeks

Freshly sprouted leaves have a color that a tree holds only for a few weeks of the year. It is light, almost yellow-green, and it gives a viewer the season away sooner than anything else in a scene. A birch, a maple or a young alder growth by water looks convincing with this tone, whereas an old spruce forest would come across as inappropriate in it.

Light from above, shadow below

A real crown is not one color. The top on which the sun falls is always lighter than the lower parts hidden in the crown's own shadow. A light green therefore serves best as an upper layer laid on a darker base, not as the only material of a whole crown. The difference between two tones makes the depth that not even the best painting can stand in for.

Parameters and processing

• A stated area of 464 square centimeters
• The material is loosened out in the fingers into a sparse structure
• It suits spring deciduous crowns, self-seeded growth and undergrowth by water
• It works best as a pair with a darker shade of the same range

A practical note on shaping: before you glue a clump on, try drawing it out between your fingers into an elongated shape. The crown of a deciduous tree is rarely round, far more often it is egg-shaped or tilted in the direction the wind pushed it and from which the sun shines on it. This single movement of the hand makes the difference between a tree and a green ball on a stick. Anyone who first looks at a few photographs of real birches at the edge of a field saves themselves hours of later reworking of finished crowns.