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The "color" of any object, be it a leopard or a flower, is an ever-changing thing and depends mostly on the color and amount of the light falling on it. The color of paint we use to match what we see also depends on the color and value of the things around the object, as Josef Albers showed in his color studies.
Practice makes perfect in color mixing. As Tony Ryder so precisely explained in his recent workshop, you follow three steps: First determine the value of what you are seeing (the relative lightness/darkness). Then determine hue. (Is this patch of the flower's petal more orange or more pink?) And finally, decide how saturated the color is. (Is this an intense orange or a somewhat muted color?)
Then you must have enough colors of paint on your palette to match what you see. Some colors in nature (especially brightly colored flowers) are very hard to match without a wide range of pigments to work from.
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