Adding colors to a representational painting that is in no way photo realistic can be incredibly complicated. The options are endless as are the potential for bad choices. A few rules to help you in the dark like a match on a windy night: Reflective light is 'warm'. Maybe only one rule-slash-guideline. Darkness again.
Mixing the colors themselves is the first step. I use only primary colors and mix the necessary shades I will eventually paint with. It's not the only way. It's just one method. While mixing your secondary colors and the lighter and darker shades thereof, something may suggest itself to you on the palette. Today not me. Not so much. They all shout their positive attributes to me while the canvas itself and painting to be is silent. Like a lover looking to see if you know what your doing.
Mixing the colors is also some kind of crazy therapy. The light of day illuminating the pigments on the palette, changing with every turn and scrape of the knife. The light reflecting off of the pigments and soaking into your retina and from there right into your central nervous system. I wish I could just do this all day. Mix a thousand different shades of a half dozen colors. Not really. That would be ultimately unsatisfying.
The wooden palette itself is making the job of painting more difficult every week (I would say every day, but I can't. See last entry). It is a thin piece of smooth, cheap particle board, with a thin layer of hardened pigment from every painting session from the last ten years affixed to it. The paint is thinker than the original tool itself and much heavier. It has me fantasizing about some gizmo to hold the palette always at the ready: telescoping, adjustable, some sort of cross between a music stand and a dentists work station on wheels. Sensitive to height changes but sturdy beneath the weight of the brush.
More so I fantasize about time. Time to think. Time to do it wrong. Time to get it right.