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Mike,
When I look at a color, the first assessment I make is how light or dark is it; that is, where would I place it in relationship to white or black paint. By practicing with this system I can come pretty close to judging which of the nine intermediate steps it falls on.
Next I assess the hue. Is it either a red, blue, purple, green or yellow? Or does it fall between two hues? If it falls between two hues which is it closer to?
Then I mix those two hues to the correct value shifting one way or the other until I have the correct hue and value.
Lastly, I determine if the color I mixed is too intense and if so I add a neutral gray of the same value to lower the chroma.
When I place it in the context of my painting only there and then do I know if it is correct. If not I correct it accordingly.
Richard,
Now I know I'm going to get into trouble here but I completely disregard the concept of warm and cool as being too ambiguious for mixing colors. Since warm and cool are relative terms they are useless to me in determining a specific hue. For example a cadmium red is cool, compared to a cad orange but it is warm, compared to magenta. I find that if I want to mix up a red I have to determine if my mixture is either correct, too purple or too yellow.
Assessing a light or a shadow in terms of warm and cool is not precise enough. A warm light can be either yellow, orange or red. I'm much better served by knowing exactly which, if I want to mix my colors accordingly.
This doesn't mean I don't like the work of people who use this terminology. Nor does it mean they're bad people, do bad paintings, or that I go around and say bad things about their Mamas. It just means I don't feel this type of thinking has validity for me, myself and I or my students.
Cool and warm, as well as yin and yang, are very helpful concepts in assessing the general relationships between different elements. Their ambiguous nature makes them very useful in the right context. For accurate color mixing, I think not.
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