Like you said, adding ult blue to yellow gives a dull green. That Dull is starting yellow to neutral on the green side. Artists usually need yellow to move neutral on the warm side. Yellow darkens to brown in elements of color, crystals. Brown before going to so dark a color that it can’t be seen is brown. Brown (dark yellow) and ult blue are complements mixing dark.

The rest of the complements mixing neutral are here. [url]http://www.mauigateway.com/~donjusko/complementsneutral.htm[/url]

Velazquez, if he had the colors we have today, in my opinion would not have resorted to black to darken colors. He would have used the complements instead.

Wow! That’s one impressive web of pages, I must say.

Why would Velazquez eschew black pigment? It’s not my intention to provoke controversy. It’s just that I don’t understand why ivory black is a Bad Thing. The best painters I know use it. For example, I really like the paintings David Leffel does, and he swears by the stuff.

I remain confused about this whole complementary colors thing, and the theory of mixing pigments. I’ve read the stuff on handprint.com several times, btw. I would like to come to grips with this phenomenon of yellow+black yielding green for example. I didn’t imagine that did I? And I see ultramarine blue and cad yellow light listed as complements. But they mix to dull green. Handprint.com has a color wheel, and to use it for mixing, one is advised to draw a curved line between blues and yellows. What’s up with that?

There are two rationales for a concept of complementary colors: to gray out colors, and to create engaging side-by-side contrasts. I believe handprint.com says that a color wheel for mixing grays is impossible – that fixing one problem with wheel invariably creates another. But I don’t understand why. Do you make the distinction between “visual” and “mixing” complements (or some other dichotomy?), or do you use a single color wheel for every purpose?

Is there a place on your web pages where a beginner should start reading?

Finally, have you considered writing a “Dummies” book? How about a Dummy’s long paragraph?

^^^^^^^ Jive Dadson ^^^^^^^