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Just last evening I had occasion to look through my file from Greene's workshop, and as much fun as I had there and as much as I learned, I confess before everyone that I just have never been able to bring myself to spend the 45 minutes that it takes me to mix the full palette of colors that he starts with. The fact is, though, that decades ago he visited museums and made meticulous studies of what hues were the most likely to be found in the best portraiture work, and so he premixes those to avoid wasting time while his VIP subjects are sitting on the model stand.
However, I don't have yet the privilege of working from subjects who have to catch the Concorde to London at 3 o'clock, so speed isn't my primary consideration. I guess I'm happy to mix up colors as I need them. Sure, I have a basic flesh tone, which I lighten and darken, warm and cool, but no, I don't pre-mix 60 or 70 hues and values.
John Sanden (another pre-mixer, so much so that he sells the pre-mixtures under his own brand name) kind of bemoans Greene's fame, while he (Sanden) is reportedly (by Sanden) chided for his "formula" mixes. I think Sanden and Greene are doing pretty much the same thing. Greene seems to me to be a little more willing to say, okay, what I see isn't on my palette of 80 colors, so I'll quickly mix that one up special. I sense from their respective video demonstrations, and my personal visit to Greene's studios, that Sanden says more often than Greene, "close enough". And usually both Sanden and Greene are right.
I won't live long enough to paint like either of them, so I'm making up time by shamelessly stealing everything I can from both of them.
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