As artists, we know how hard it is to understand color. It’s like nailing jello to the wall, everybody sees color differently. Even though color is subjective and we respond to it differently there are important aspects about color we have to understand and experience. One of them is understanding color intensity. How strong should we make our color? 

One thing that will help is to do color studies with muted colors and saturated (intense) color. It helps to experience using both pure colors (colors that are more primary like cadmium yellow, cadmium red, Alizarin crimson, Ultramarine blue) and earth colors or muted colors (yellow ochre, burnt sienna, raw umber, ivory black). 

Here is a good exercise to get a feel for muted and pure colors: Take one photo and do 2 small paintings (6x8, 8x10). In one study use a pure palette and on the other painting use a muted or earth palette. In the 2 paintings below I used a pure palette of cad. yellow light, alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue, and you can see the colors are more intense. On the second painting I used earth colors, yellow ochre, burnt sienna and ivory black. It is interesting to see the black look like blue when put it into this context. The second painting is more muted and harmonious, but both suggest the light that was in the reference, the difference is the intensity of the colors. Both palettes appeal to me and I use them both at different times.