o it best? How
much space do you want that brushful to cover? Take enough blue, add
to it a yellow of the sort that will make approximately the color.
Don't stir them up; drag one into the other a little--very little. The
color is crude? Another color or two will bring it into tone. Don't
mix it much. Don't smear it all over your palette. Make a smallish dab
of it, keeping it well piled up. If you get any one color too great in
quantity, then you will have to take more of the others again to keep
it in balance. Be careful to take as nearly the right proportions of
each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few times; for every
time you add and mix you flatten out the tone more, and lose its
vibration and life.

Now, if the color is too dark, what will you lighten it with? White?
Wait a minute. Think. Will white take away the richness of it? White
always grays and flattens the color. Don't put it into a warm, rich
color unless it belongs there. Then only as much as is needed.

Treat all your tints this way. Is it a high value on a forehead in
full light? White first, then a little modifying color, yellow first,
then red; perhaps no red: the kind of yellow may do it. When you have
a rich color to mix, get it as strong as you can first. Then gray it
as much as you need to, never the reverse. But when you want a
delicate color, make it delicate first, and then strengthen it
cautiously.

These seem but common-sense. Hardly necessary to take the trouble to
write it down? But common-sense is not always attributed to artists,
and the beginner does not seem able always to apply his common-sense
to his painting at first. To say it to him opens his eyes. Best be on
the safe side.

=Crude Color.=--The beginner is sure to get crude color, either from
lack of perception of color qualities, or inability to mix the tints
he knows he wants. In the latter case crude color either comes from
too few colors in the mixture, or from inharmonious colors brought
together, which is only another form of the same, for an added
complementary would make it right. For instance, Prussian blue and
chrome yellow mixed will make a powerful green which you could hardly
put anywhere--a strong, crude green. Well, what is the complementary?
Red? And what does a complementary do to a color? Neutralizes, grays.
Then add a very little red, enough to gray the green, not enough to
kill its quality.

Or if you don't want the color that makes, take a lit