Practice with Munsell color charts

This color exercise in which I am working to discern and to control chroma precisely.  I wanted to mix accurately the red and green in the apple in the light and shadow sides. The shadow side is tricky because you want to maintain the correct hue but lower the value and chroma. 
There are three basic ways to reduce chroma — 
a) mix with a neutral (either black & white mixed, or, better, a complement-mixed neutral), 
b) mix with a complementary color
c) mix with a lower-chroma version of your color (often a brown or other earth color). You will have such lower chroma colors for only a few of your hues.

Color Mixing using Munsell

Setup to paint lemon

(With help of Munsell)

The Munsell color system is the most logical color system – forget about other color systems. It defines colors by Hue (red, yellow, blue, green, blue-green, yellow-red ect.), Value (the lightness of a color; starting at 0 for a perfect black up to 10 for a perfect white – both can`t be represented by tube paints), and Chroma (purity of a color; the lower the chroma the more it tends to a neutral grey).

It is widely agreed within the realist painting community that the Munsell Color System is the most accurate way of understanding color and identifying it in context with other colors. 

All objects of nature are made visible to the sight by the light and of the sun shining upon them. The result is that by means of this we see the colors and textures of the various objects of nature. From this it may be seen that color and texture are the property of light and that they do not enter the property of the shadow. For shadow is darkness and in the darkness there is neither form nor color. Hence form and color belong distinctly to light. Shadow — as the object illuminated by the sun is more or less opaque, so when the light of the sun in obscured by that object, the shadow which results is more or less black and opaque, being illuminated only by the light reflected into it by surrounding objects. By virtue of shadow all objects of nature assume form or shape, for if there were no shadow all would be a flat glare of light, color and texture…But when the shadow appears, the object takes form and shape. If the edges of an object are rounded, then the edges of the shadow become softened; if the edges of an object are sharp, then the shadows is correspondingly acure. So, by means of the softness or sharpness of the solid object, is made manifest. Hence, it would follow that the province of shadow is to produce form and shape, and that in itself it possesses no power of conveying an impression of color or texture.”

-Howard Pyle, as quoted by Andrew Loomis, Creative Illustration, pg. 136

Studying anatomy of figure/my favorite Anatomy reference books

Pastel on Canson paper 

This is pastel study of a male figure. I was focused on the study of the muscles. I toned a piece of Canson charcoal paper with walnut ink. I then tried to proceed with drawing in form of lines, structure, and gesture. I then built on that with modeling the figure in last stages. You can see the stages in the drawing.  I referred to my favorite anatomy reference books and I will list those if anyone is interested. 

A. Human Anatomy for Artist, Eliot Goldfinger, Oxford University Press, 1991

B. Artistic Anatomy, by Dr. Paul Richer, Watson-Guptill Publications, 1971