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Thank you, Karin!
When I was in the sciences, my lifelong pre-occupation with the nature of color was considered "weird". Now that I am in the arts, it's nice to have my interests appreciated.
But analyzing is one thing; practicing quite another.
You are obviously extraordinarily gifted when dealing with color (etc.) -- your work is rich, sumptuous, and elegant.
It is as amazing to me to learn that you are partially color-blind as it was for me to learn that Beethoven was deaf.
If you don't mind my asking, is your one eye "red blind" (red looks green), "blue blind" (blue looks yellow), or "green blind" (green looks tan)? There we go back to the "primary colors"!
As I understand it, you work in the traditional method of glazing colors over a monochrome underpainting. I would imagine that in glazing you rely more upon your "color" eye (even if you don't realize it), while in underpainting you rely more upon your "black and white" eye.
When I have a particularly difficult passage to paint in regards to form, I dim the room lights and/or squint: I then rely more upon the rods than the cones in my eyes, to see the scene more in monochrome.
Incidentally, my technique is like that more common amongst post-Renaissance artists: My underpaintings are also in color. In fact, my overpaintings are typically not transparent glazes, except for patches of water or the like, but rather translucent "velaturas", particularly for the lifelike translucency of skin.
I pre-mix all my colors, as Jim said Daniel Green does and as many if not most of the Old Masters did, for the very reasons Jim noted. However, with unfilled tubes so hard to find, I have learned how to store my "stockpiles" in tiny, inexpensive plastic cups (from restaurant supply companies) -- the trick is not to use the lids that come with the cups but rather to use one cup as a "stopper" for another -- one must exclude air from above the paint to prevent drying, by oxidation (The paints stay workable for quite some time that way).
P.S. Jim, I don't know what that discussion of money was about; but if you have any extra lying around, feel free to send it my way (ha, ha)!
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