The Colour With No Name 3 of 7

Dr Franklyn: ‘That’s right - people need them of course; They are the same as Vermillion red or Cerulean, commonly held descriptives or flavourisations – to use your word. Everything we see, hear, touch and smell has to be described in one way or another of course, and a perceived marketplace, or a science, a history, or something’s manufacture defines the kind of description.
Is Magnolia forever Magnolia? or, does it miraculously and expensively transform into a Honey Silk somewhere in the higher echelons of interior design, – but what I was really interested in are the colours that aren’t noticed, or haven’t been sold, the shy colours – the colours with no names…’
Me: Welllll…There are a whole batch of colours that I and a couple of other painters know, we call them Neptunian…’
Dr Franklyn: Are they from a particular part of the spectrum? Can you point to any around us?
Me: No – there are none around us, I can tell you that without looking. From the time when you did all that painting on the island - you know about simultaneous contrast don’t you? – or you found out by empirical methods - that a colour changes it’s value depending on the colour next to it, or the colour surrounding it etc. Well - a Neptunian colour becomes such; not only because of that effect – which can be purposefully encouraged to an end, or built at a subconscious level; but can be mixed to act as such with other colours of it’s ilk… often by scumbling one colour over another.’
Dr Franklyn: ‘ Okaay… I think I followed you there - and a scumble is a layer of paint who’s basic nature is to be opaque but which is rendered semi opaque by the action of it’s application ? a scumble …’