I keep fussing with and about color, both theory and practice, but like Jay, I find it difficult to be systematic. I think I should be, but at best, I circle and come closer to a system.

That said, doing pleine aire work requires as light a weight to carry as possible, so I have been painting with Alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue, mixed white and perylene black (which is really a black-green). In eastern Oregon I often had to add naples yellow. And I’m thinking of adding veridian to my western Oregon palette. But the reduced palette, as Sunil says, has interesting side effects that I find useful.

Graydon Parrish, Richard Murdock and others have started a blog on painting with the Munsell System. I think that they are Graydo’s secrets.

Go to http://www.rationalcolor.blogspot.com

http://www.dudeverve.blogspot.com is also a must!

It is difficult hearing about loss and it is thus I react to yours.

Your approach to painting seems a lot more ’spur of the moment’ when it comes to color usage and that yields wonderful results - done right.

Yes, glazing can be powerful tool to introduce translucency into a painting. Sometimes I achieve the same by dabbing on a thick layer and then just applying an old rag to the painting and stripping off just enough to show the layer underneath. Oftentimes I am not careful and it goes down all the way to the gesso.

Allow me to add my voice to the choir of huzzas. Have you scheduled your one-man show at the Tate yet?

Your cancer patient is so insightfully colored. The final hours can be like that. My father’s forehead was ablaze with fever the last time ever that I touched him. Your image thereby takes me both back and aback.

In answer to your question, I muddle by. The fact that I’m fond of transparent and translucent glazes puts the matter of color on a different footing. Such glazes filter each other with the base hue modified by succeeding layers. Green, for example, can be a matter of mixing a pigment into the varnish. Or it can be achieved by a layer of blue, say, covered by one of yellow - or the obverse. But, granted the same pots of varnish, yellow over blue can be a very different creature from blue over yellow.

The degree of dye or pigment saturation in the varnish is another significant variable.
This said, and being the slob that I am, a technique that I call splash, slosh and wash seems to work best for me. Sometimes I will revert to the sinister sounding “drip and run” approach. In these scenarios whatever I can squeeze out of a tube or scrape from the bottom of a can becomes the color of the moment. How dare I presume such outrage? I think the answer lies in the fact that I have no particular color objectives when I set out. It’s all a big surprise. Occasionally I can repeat an effect. However, to save effort, I have had my fingers surgically crossed.

This works for me, though. I have found that an incised and roughened surface will selectively pick up the paint that I may be applying with my fingers or a slab of foamula. Repeated applications hit different high points leading to patterns of hue.

But, sir, as you set out your work, so shall I. Henceforth I foreswear the crude application of color and will endeavor not to so blindly reach into the paint box. But I can’t guarantee a thing as talk is cheap.

I like the looks of your reduced palettes. If you took the last picture — a great one — even further, it would correspond to the toning I do on “black and white” photographs. In fact, almost none of those I have presented here are neutral shades of gray. In the previous post, for example, the darkest tones are shifted towards blue and the midtones toward orange. Color is so powerful that even a little goes a long way.

Yes, that above statement regarding color perception is a key fundamental to starting off - you put it well. I liked the store / dinner analogy also. It makes it clearer for me.

I read about Liquitex - maybe one of these days I will go ahead and try it - it seems to get some good reviews (I read about it in another online forum about painting)…