When it comes to phthalos, there are two: this one, PG7, aka Phthalo Green Blue Shade, which is the blue-green shade, and the more leaf green hue named PG36.

This shimmering deep blue-green shade unleashes a chromatic range of beryl and aquamarine in glazes or in tints with titanium white.

As already mentioned, the single pigment paints for the two phthalo greens are called Phthalo Green Yellow Shade - PG36 and Phthalo Green Blue Shade - PG7. Both of them are helpful for hitting different colors of the rainbow at their highest chromas.

They are also useful in complementary color mixing. These colors will pull back Cadmium Reds (PR108), various magentas, and whole lot of other crimsons. They do this so well that they are often ingredients in chromatic black mixtures. For the sake of thoroughness, even though PG36 isn't the focus of this article, it is the phthalo green of choice in Gamblin's Chromatic Black.

And it should go without saying that these are ingredients in a huge array of convenience greens. A quick look through the convenience greens where this pigment appears will reveal just how broadly it's used in mixes. Though of course their presence of PG7 your paintbox is by no means mandatory, with this green at your fingertips you can expand you palette's gamut.

We were totally surprised to see differences among premium brands, as we initially thought there would not be much variety in this color when it came to oil paints. The highest tinting strength was found in M Graham Phthalo Green. Among premium brands there were differences in hue.

Since PG7 is one pigment where a person might not find enormous differences between student and premium brands (or so the oil painter’s lore goes) we included a student brand. The other reason for this is that sometimes painters say they even prefer the student brand. We were shocked to see that the student brand did not have the same depth of value, nor did it have the same hue. More testing is needed to see if this was just true of the Lukas Studio version or if there are broader patterns to be found here which would apply to other student brands as well. The Lukas Studio Viridian (Phthalo) was lighter in masstone, lighter when mixed Oleogel, and more emerald (yellower as opposed to bluer) in tints. Here we will say warmer to mean closer to yellow and cooler to mean closer to blue. None of these paints get as warm as the other Phthalo Green Yellow Shade, PG36. On a similar note, none of the phthalo greens tested here got anywhere near as blue as a as Phthalo Turquoise or anywhere close to a full blue like Phthalo Blue PB15:3.

To compare these paints we tinted them out with Williamsburg Titanium White. The semi-circle regions show what the paint looked like when tinted 1:1 with white. The samples were prepared on Ampersand Gessobord panel, and the glazes were made with a bit of Rublev Oleogel.

The Vasari Phthalo Green, Michael Harding Phthalo Green Lake and Williamsburg Phthalo Green are similar at a glance as warmer versions of this pigment. The M Graham Phthalo Green and the Old Holland Scheveningen Green Dark were bluer greens.

The M Graham is the strongest tinter and is made of walnut oil. We tested a student brand as well (Lukas) since some painters use student brands in this pigment. The student brand, Lukas studio, as not quite as deep in value and was also the least blue-leaning.