Colour choice and adjustment

Greetings! Some painters nail the exact colour they need on the first go. I'm not one of them. In my experience, 90% share my problem. Colours change as the colours change around them--and you can't know the colour of a passage until you're picking up what you're putting down. The situation is compounded by the presence of (or desirability for) reflected lights, silhouettes, local colours, broken colours, cast shadows, equal intensity lay-bys, etc. Finding the right colour can be like looking for the Higgs boson. Understanding how colour works is largely a self-taught skill. Two years ago a young New Zealand painter, Richard Robinson, produced a remarkable video on the subject. There's a twice-weekly letter about it here. Further, every serious painter should study the research of Josef Albers, Albert Munsell, and other colour wizards. Here are a few practical ploys to consider: * Consider limiting your palette. One of my all-time best tips is to start out with large dollops of six or seven pigments only. How's about black, white, cad red, crimson, yellow and blue. By forcing the mixing of opposites on the colour wheel, limited palettes facilitate delicious, sophisticated colours. * Consider "pushing colour." This is where you overstate early on with brighter or "any old" colour in the full knowledge that you can adjust later. Curiously, a gut decision in overstating often gives a delightful energy that doesn't need later modification. * Consider grisaille. This is where black, white and gray-scale become a chassis for colour to be localized later. Apart from achieving a certain kind of style, grisaille proves once again that relative tone values are more important than local colour. * Consider "infinite play." Taking care not to overwork, keep adjusting colour hue, intensity and tone value. The hues within sunlight and shadow, for example, are not always obvious at first. Keep playing until you begin to see visual truth. * Consider glazing. Tone down or re-tone passages with a transparent, generally darker tone spread over a dry under-painting. Warm can be made cool and cool can be made warm, either overall or in selected passages. One of the most underrated and underused ploys, glazing fixes and pulls together lame colour compositions for fun and profit. Best regards, Robert