[Juan Martinez]

Marvin

If I may interject here; I agree with you. I was taught to see and to understand colour as a combination of its three components and doing so allows everyone to be speaking the same language ... so-to-speak.

Because not all paint brands necessarily yield the same colours for any given paint name, it is really helpful, as you say, to identify a colour by its generic descriptors. The natural earth tones are particularly prone to variations as are newly made recreations of historic colours such as "Indian Yellow". These can be all over the place, can't they, and require descriptive terminology. The manufacturers are emulating colours that no longer exist and sometimes I wish they'd pick different names.

I don't know whether the system I learned was ever based on Munsell's but there are similarities. In it, all colours can be described by a combination of their hue, value, and chroma. But there are a couple of differences from the Munsell system, too. I was taught the 9-point, European (so I'm told) value scale instead of a 10-point one. It is, however, the same as Denman Ross's value scale (Ross was an American. Are you familiar with his work? It's fascinating stuff. I think he was at least partly a contemporary of Munsell's.)

There is a further complication in the system I use because, in it, the values are numbered opposite to that of the Munsell scale. That is, the darker values are higher numbers and lighter values, lower, with black being a 9 and white being a 1. It gets very confusing when talking values with the many people familiar with the Munsell scale. This is doubly so because I would still say that a light colour is a "high value" tone even though the "number" I would use to identify its value would be a lower numeral. Sheesh; it gets complicated.

Denman Ross didn't use numbers in his 9 value system, preferring to use names, instead: White, High Light, Light, Low Light, Middle, High Dark, Dark, Low Dark, Black. (Wt, HLt, Lt, Llt, M, HD, D, LD, Blk.). The only advantage -- if that is the right word -- I can see in a nine-value system over others is that with an odd number you will always have an exact middle value. So, a #5 is the middle value, as are 3 and 7, and so on. A small thing, I know.

The other difference between what I learned and Munsell's system is that you CAN compare chroma of unlike hues. I understand that Munsell says chroma is only relevant within a given hue. That is, you cannot -- according to Munsell -- compare the chroma of a blue with that of a red. Is this correct? Was Reilly also taking that approach? I can understand why that is done, but for practical usage, it works just as well to consider chromas right across the hue spectrum in any given painting.

Anyway, just thought I'd throw all of that into the mix.

Best.

Juan