As I was exploring this theory I thought it would be of great help for future reference if it was laid out in front of me, so I decided to graffiti my wall.
Ran out of room so moved to the next wall, quite of like a scientist's blackboard.
I started with learning the colours and how all these hues and many more can be made by the 3 primary colours in the middle; magenta, blue and yellow.
Secondary colours are 2 of the primaries mixed together both at 100% saturation (full strength), i.e. magenta and blue makes purple, yellow and blue make green and yellow and magenta make warm red.
Tertiary colours are 2 primaries mixed, 1 primary is 100% saturation and the other is at 50% saturation; mauve violet, purple blue,turquoise, lime green, orange and cool red.
Quaternary colours consist of 1 primary at 100% saturation and the other at either 25% or 75% saturation; red violet,ultramarine blue, blue green, cool green, warm green, yellow green, orange yellow, red orange, red and cherry red.
All pure hues should be bright and clean-looking
Note, The difference between gouache and watercolour paints is; gouache is an opaque paint and watercolour is transparent.
A shade can be made from any pure hue, whether it be a hue made from 2 primary colour together, i.e. 100% red and !00% yellow make warm red, add blue to warm red at different saturations and you get shades of red.
Or 1 main primary at 100% mixed with the remaining 2 primaries at different saturations, i.e. 100% yellow, 50 % blue and 25% red will produce shades of lime green
Note; all 3 primaries added together each at 100% saturation will create black.
Tints are simply any pure hue or black that has been lightened. You can create a tint by adding water to watercolours or white to opaque mediums like oil and acrylic. Tints of pure hues are considered to be pastel colours; pink, pale yellow, peach, ligh blue, aqua, lilac and many more. Tints can be made from other tints; red tint and yellow tint will make an orange tint.
What is weird is that, in each of the shape's shadows, the main primary used for the local colour ( the actual colour used, i.e. red-orange, not shade or tint) seems to reflect in the grey. Is this because of the reflection from the shape?, like in the red-orange shape, it has more of a red glow. But if that were true, surely the turquose box would give the shadow a green tint? It doesn't, it's a blue glow because that is the main primary used to make turquoise. What makes it a little harder to understand is, that the same grey was used for both the red-orange and turquoise shapes. Baffling!!!!! Is it the shape reflecting in the grey? - but shadows don't have colour - or is it the main primary of the local colour brings forth that primary in the grey?, or is it one of the same thing?
Colour Temperature is a term that is used to describe the warmth or coolness of a colour. The traditional artist's wheel divides the warm and cool hues by splitting it in half; yellow to purple-mauve are considered warm colours and yellow-green to purple are cool colours.
A more accurate theory would be that the third of the wheel that contains pure hues with a 100% saturation of yellow are warm temperature hues; from secondary warm red to secondary green
The bottom two thirds of the wheel are considered to be cool temperature hues as they contain no yellow or saturates of yellow below 100%.
Shaded hues can be made in 5 different ways:-
These are the shades achieved when I mixed the complements together.
Using Primaries For Greys, Work achieves more character when you mix your greys using the 3 primary colours instead of complements or black. This is because the amounts of magenta, cyan and yellow can be shifted and manipulated, giving you warm and cool nuances that bring greys alive. This mimics how we see colour today. Using just the complements limits the greys that are made, i.e. a grey made from warm red and cyan can only create reddish grey and bluey grey nuances.
Painting Whites, a method of painting whites and shades of white involves the use of all 3 primaries, because it allows the freedom of adjusting the colours - from cyan to yellow, cool to warm - more easily. When painting whites and off white areas use thin washes of the 3 primaries allowing a light and very tranparent grey to separate into passages of cool and warm colours. The movement of colour that is created in shaded areas is a technique that the Impressionists; such as Claude Monet, mastered. Using this technique brought their paintings to life, giving them vitality.
Fig 2; this palette uses the same turquoise as fig1, but I used burnt sienna instead of cool red, to demonstrate that you can use shades to lower intensities for atmospheric perspective. Purple adds to the greying down of the colours for this scene. 
Fig 3: here I used the complement of primary yellow - purple, to grey down the colour to give atmospheric depth to the image. A little orange adds interest to the muted colours. The colours in the distance are not only greyer and lighter but cooler as well.
Fig 4; the same technique has been applied now with cyan and it's complement warm red, plus a little turquoise. The emphasis has been to lower the intensities by lightening the dominant cyan shade, rather than by further greying it as I move into the picture's distant areas.
I started with learning the colours and how all these hues and many more can be made by the 3 primary colours in the middle; magenta, blue and yellow.
Secondary colours are 2 of the primaries mixed together both at 100% saturation (full strength), i.e. magenta and blue makes purple, yellow and blue make green and yellow and magenta make warm red.
Tertiary colours are 2 primaries mixed, 1 primary is 100% saturation and the other is at 50% saturation; mauve violet, purple blue,turquoise, lime green, orange and cool red.
Quaternary colours consist of 1 primary at 100% saturation and the other at either 25% or 75% saturation; red violet,ultramarine blue, blue green, cool green, warm green, yellow green, orange yellow, red orange, red and cherry red.
Note, The difference between gouache and watercolour paints is; gouache is an opaque paint and watercolour is transparent.
Or 1 main primary at 100% mixed with the remaining 2 primaries at different saturations, i.e. 100% yellow, 50 % blue and 25% red will produce shades of lime green
Note; all 3 primaries added together each at 100% saturation will create black.
Tints are simply any pure hue or black that has been lightened. You can create a tint by adding water to watercolours or white to opaque mediums like oil and acrylic. Tints of pure hues are considered to be pastel colours; pink, pale yellow, peach, ligh blue, aqua, lilac and many more. Tints can be made from other tints; red tint and yellow tint will make an orange tint. Shades can be made from tints by adding tints of the missing primary; orange tint with tints of missing primary (blue) creates a earth colour tint
Value is the lightness or darkness of a colour. A colour at it's greatest intensity may be light or dark when placed on a scale of values. An artistic arrangement of darks and lights could therefore be accomplished entirely pure colours, though this wouldn't really co-inside with the true colours of nature. A picture is composed of light and dark valued colours of varying intensity. From bright to dull, as well as pure hues, shades, tints, greys and tints of shades.
Dark and light become more powerful elements in composition because they help us to define shapes more readily.
The red box; it's local colour is red-orange, to define light, the top is painted in a tint of red-orange, to define the darker side is painted in a shade of red-orange. The shadow was achieved by adding alot of cyan (blue) to the shade of red-orange, which made black, then I watered it down alot to create grey.What is weird is that, in each of the shape's shadows, the main primary used for the local colour ( the actual colour used, i.e. red-orange, not shade or tint) seems to reflect in the grey. Is this because of the reflection from the shape?, like in the red-orange shape, it has more of a red glow. But if that were true, surely the turquose box would give the shadow a green tint? It doesn't, it's a blue glow because that is the main primary used to make turquoise. What makes it a little harder to understand is, that the same grey was used for both the red-orange and turquoise shapes. Baffling!!!!! Is it the shape reflecting in the grey? - but shadows don't have colour - or is it the main primary of the local colour brings forth that primary in the grey?, or is it one of the same thing?
A more accurate theory would be that the third of the wheel that contains pure hues with a 100% saturation of yellow are warm temperature hues; from secondary warm red to secondary green
The bottom two thirds of the wheel are considered to be cool temperature hues as they contain no yellow or saturates of yellow below 100%.
Complementary colours - (forming a complete or balanced whole) - are opposite on the colour wheel, i.e. green is warm red's complement. Placed together on a painting they enhance each other's vibrancy, they complement each other.
How to use complementary colours; Almost every colour we observe in the natural world is a shade. This means it consists of all 3 primaries at various degrees of saturation. The only pure hues we normally see are the colour of objects, like a flower, plastic toys, or the colours on a TV and neon signs. Mainly the world is muted, even greyish.
Every artist should therefore learn to mix a wide variety of shades. Except for the 3 primaries, he/she should never have to use any other colour from tubes in painting.
- By mixing the 'missing' primary into a pure hue.
- By mixing a pure hue with a paint that is premixed to a shade.
- By mixing a pure hue with a small amount of black and thinning with water, (white if you're using opaque mediums)
- By mixing the 'missing' primary into the pure hue's cooler neighbour on the colour wheel. These neighbours are called contiguous colours, they sit next to each other; purple mauve and red violet are mauve violet's neighbours. Red and red-orange are the contiguous colours of warm red, but because red is nearer to the cool hue section of the wheel, it helps create better shades.
- By mixing complements together and thinning with water.
Using Primaries For Greys, Work achieves more character when you mix your greys using the 3 primary colours instead of complements or black. This is because the amounts of magenta, cyan and yellow can be shifted and manipulated, giving you warm and cool nuances that bring greys alive. This mimics how we see colour today. Using just the complements limits the greys that are made, i.e. a grey made from warm red and cyan can only create reddish grey and bluey grey nuances.Nuances are subtle differences, as in colour, meaning or tone.
Black of course has equal amounts of the 3 primaries, although if there is slightly more yellow, then the black lightens to a warm grey as 'ivory black' does, or if there is more cyan then the black will lighten a cool grey. Either way, the proportions of magenta, cyan and yellow are locked into the pigment, so this basically creates uniform greys when lightened with water or white. This method yields a boring grey that lack nuance and character.
Painting Whites, a method of painting whites and shades of white involves the use of all 3 primaries, because it allows the freedom of adjusting the colours - from cyan to yellow, cool to warm - more easily. When painting whites and off white areas use thin washes of the 3 primaries allowing a light and very tranparent grey to separate into passages of cool and warm colours. The movement of colour that is created in shaded areas is a technique that the Impressionists; such as Claude Monet, mastered. Using this technique brought their paintings to life, giving them vitality.Here are a few of my experiments with trying to achieve grey shades and nuances.
Atmospheric Perspective, temperature is a colour trait that gives us advancing and receding colour. Warm brilliant reds, oranges and yellows appear nearer to us than cool blues, greens and violets seen from the same distance. Similarly a pure hue will advance, whereas a muted, or greyed-down colour will recede.
Pictures are given depth by exploiting this aspect of colour, in what is called 'atmospheric perspective'. The principle is; take the intensity out of any pure hue in the areas where an illusion of depth or distance is wanted. Greyed down colours - shades, and lightened colours - tints, give the impression of distance because the atmosphere has a normally muted effect on colour, as do conditions such as haze, smog and fog.
The 4 paintings below show the same scene but painted with 4 different palettes. The shaded greyish colours in the distant areas are created to give an illusion of atmospheric perspective. Each of the palettes was made from just the 3 primary colours, magenta, cyan and yellow.
Fig 2; this palette uses the same turquoise as fig1, but I used burnt sienna instead of cool red, to demonstrate that you can use shades to lower intensities for atmospheric perspective. Purple adds to the greying down of the colours for this scene. 
Fig 3: here I used the complement of primary yellow - purple, to grey down the colour to give atmospheric depth to the image. A little orange adds interest to the muted colours. The colours in the distance are not only greyer and lighter but cooler as well.
Fig 4; the same technique has been applied now with cyan and it's complement warm red, plus a little turquoise. The emphasis has been to lower the intensities by lightening the dominant cyan shade, rather than by further greying it as I move into the picture's distant areas.
