A New Look at Color

After a couple of interesting conversations about colors to use on a plein air palette, I finally took a hike to the library and checked out that oddly named book: Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green. That's not the way I remember color theory from high school, but that's the point. Not everything I've been taught turns out to be reliable when put to the test.

I know they are all in cahoots in the same painting group, but several different folk have mentioned to this beginner that a minimal selection of colors, as few as six, in fact (well, maybe a two or three more for convienence) should allow mixing of almost any other hue I might desire. Not likely, I thought, but let's see.

So after a week of study in this slightly unconventional text, I'm starting to catch on. If this new way of explaining color mixing holds up, maybe I have found the answers to many questions about why my blues and yellows never made bright, clean greens either. OooooKayeeee.

Now I have to try, and it it proofs out, to unlearn. That's tough to do, but in other endeavors has been worthwhile. Undo old bad habits, but quickly replace them with successful new modalities. I'll have to squeeze out some colors on a real palette and try this for myself. It's pudding-time. And since this old kid has a lot of ancestral Missouri in him, he's gonna have to validate this, though, before passing it by. Sure would be nice to be true. Would solve a host of problems and answer a ton of questions.

I'm going to go sort through the old paint tubes I have been given. Maybe I'll find enough Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, French Ultramarine Blue, Cerulean Blue, Lemon Yellow, and Cadimum Yellow Pale to test the claim.

Who wants to help out?