"I’ve built up an intuitive understanding of how most of them work together, which has come from practice, from all the times that I took bold risks in the initial layers of a painting."
I did the 'Richard Schmid swatches' years ago as detailed in his Alla Prima book. The thing is I totally agree with you that if you just paint enough you will eventually understand how your paints work together. The swatches exercise just speeds that understanding up so instead of making the same mixing mistakes you know intuitively how to mix that particular beautiful 'grey' which has no known name. Buying a premade swatch book is practically useless to my mind - you have to do work yourself to get the understanding :)
I agree with the pre-made swatch books being pretty useless. Nothing beats practice and doing the work! I also see how swatching can speed up the learning process, but it just doesn’t work with the way my brain is wired. :)
"I’ve built up an intuitive understanding of how most of them work together, which has come from practice, from all the times that I took bold risks in the initial layers of a painting."
I did the 'Richard Schmid swatches' years ago as detailed in his Alla Prima book. The thing is I totally agree with you that if you just paint enough you will eventually understand how your paints work together. The swatches exercise just speeds that understanding up so instead of making the same mixing mistakes you know intuitively how to mix that particular beautiful 'grey' which has no known name. Buying a premade swatch book is practically useless to my mind - you have to do work yourself to get the understanding :)
I agree with the pre-made swatch books being pretty useless. Nothing beats practice and doing the work! I also see how swatching can speed up the learning process, but it just doesn’t work with the way my brain is wired. :)
Absolutely - each person learns best when they enjoy what they are doing.
Yes! That’s the key to learning!