leonardo learning--color basics

Leonardo used very subdued colors and he always suggested dusk was the best light and the best time to paint a figure etc...There was/is nothing garish in Leonardo's color. It is smooth and harmonic and graceful.

Here is the most basic color lesson for those who do not know about color.


The three primary colors are Red, Yellow and blue .

These primaries cannot be made from other colors and form a perfect triangle of possibility that you can use to make almost any color with these on your palette.

Yellow and blue make green and red and blue make purple ...etc

this is a very simple lesson but it is important to understand the idea of primary colors as your travel on the path of Leonardo learning.


Blue is the color of dreams and the sea.

Red is the color of the blood of armies, the blood that stains the soil beneath the ageless battle of reason vs. Love---Apollonian vs. Dionysian--- the battle field exists in every human. (alex said this, not leonardo)

Yellow is the color of genius and madness and the sun of wisdom.


Alex never wears anything red--ever never and never. If I wear red it is like a pebble in my psychic shoe, I cannot ignore it and my eyes are distracted all day long like a man with a bee in his ear.


Alex never ate "mac and cheese" ever never ever as a child or now because I abhorred the color yellow that it was...It was and is the most horrid yellow/ orange--- neither fish nor fowl!...alex would sooner eat a blue vegetable (which doesnt and cannot exist.) than taste the dreaded and failed yellow of mac and cheese...