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I use my palette as a toolbox, wherein I have a color available for every need. Do I need a warm middle value orange? There's English Red. Do I need a cool mid value yellow? There's gold ochre. A cool dark transparent green? Viridian. A warm dark transparent green? Sap. Which brings me to the crux of this post. Yellows are not all warm, and blues are not all cool.
Cadmium yellow is a warm yellow, and yellow ochre and gold ochre are cool yellows. The biggest problem arises with blues. All blues are warm. Some are warmer than others, but I found it necessary to add ivory black to my palette as my only cool blue. This, I propose, is the solution to the "blue suit" problem. If you go into a blue suit by using any of the blues, you are off the chart into warm territory, but if you are under the impression the all blues are cool, you are miles away from solving the problem, you need to cool down those warm blues.
This can be achieved by cooling with your true "cools," alizarin crimson, dioxazine purple, or ivory black. This is why the suggested solution of Phthalo, black, and white would work, because you are cooling down the pthalo blue. But be careful. Phthalo is very very warm. If in this formula, there is too much phthalo, you will only succeed in exacerbating the problem.
Michael's answer is on point, it just needs to be expanded a little. As well as things "going away" (atmosphere) moving towards the middle value, (darks lighter, lights darker and colors becoming more muted/grayer), the edges become softer, and the highlights are a darker value as well. In the time honored tradition, squint. Those onions will mass out into a form, not individual onions. The eggplants in particular are too detailed, too much contrast on the 'highlights." Mass them together, knock them down. I suggest to my students whose backgrounds are too "there" to make a wash with turp and a little burnt umber and dioxazine purple. (Remember that burnt umber is used for gray in the limited palette painting, and ivory black and white are used as your blue). It's more controllable than using Liquin; you just wipe out the wash until it looks right. You can even wipe all the way back to the original painting without incident (if the paint is dry underneath).
Peggy
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