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Summary: The Second Coming it ain't
Review: I'm not sure what all the fuss is about. If you are brand new to color mixing this book will be helpful, if only to tell you it isn't necessary to buy all the colors each art instructor recommends. However, if you have been painting any time at all, you know that you need at least a 6 primary system as opposed to a 3 primary system. From there, with a few "earth" colors you can mix whatever color you want. The color mixing part of the book is great for that, however, a large part of the the book is spent "proving" that the 3 primary system is wrong. Who cares? As long as a system works I don't care if it is "subtractive" or "additive".
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Summary: Nothing new here.
Review: I'm not sure what all the hype is about this book. The color bias wheel is nothing new. If you already know that you need a warm and cool red in your pallette, then spend your $$$ on another book.I had hoped to see more in depth info on the work done by Birren, Itten or Munsell. I found the colored examples to be poorly printed resulting in the purple always looking brown. How helpful is that? There were no examples of artwork to show the benefits of using a color biased pallette which made it a really boring read. Wilcox goes on way too much about the evils of the 3 color primary system and I'm not sure I buy his theory that a PURE blue and a PURE yellow would make a black. Color Choices by Stephen Quiller is a much better book. Stephen note only understands color, he knows what to do with it.
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Summary: full-color eye opener!
Review: If you have trouble putting a clean brush in new paint, this will inspire you to systematically succeed in making a beautiful mark on clean watercolor paper -- in just the color you hoped for. There's a method to making a watercolor come out looking beautiful -- it's in the way the colors are made, lay over each other, and blend (or not). Here's how. And it's easy to learn. Go for it!
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Summary: Must-have book for understanding colour mixing.
Review: Like many people I imagine, I left art school not knowing much more about colour than when I went in, my teachers' ignorance of real colour mixing as profound as mine. Eventually I was lucky enough to come across this book and my eyes were finally opened. The inaccurate methods propagated by traditional colour-mixing theories have been with us for quite a while but this book finally dispels them all, at last. In an orderly, logical manner the author takes us through these mistakes and points us down the path to correctly mixing a desired colour - no more will you have to "make do" - instead, by understanding the bias of pigments, the outcome is no longer a matter of guesswork or intuition. These techniques should be taught in every art class in every school, and it really is simple enough for this to be practical. Another beauty is that it works with any medium. I cannot recommend this book highly enough for painters in any media who want to understand the mechanics of colour mixing and I thank Michael Wilcox for this cornerstone work. P.S. Please don't be put off by the ill-informed, mistaken one-star review from Riverside, California. The writer's view that the colour theory expounded in this book "falls short of what could be achieved with a proper understanding" only highlights their ignorance of practical colour mixing, as the author's theory never fails to accurately predict mixing outcomes.
Rating:
Summary: Must-have book for understanding colour mixing.
Review: Like many people I imagine, I left art school not knowing much more about colour than when I went in. But eventually I was lucky enough to come across this book and my eyes were finally opened. The mistaken theories propagated by traditional colour-mixing theories have been with us for quite but this book dispels them all, at last. In an orderly, logical manner Michael Wilcox takes us through these mistakes and points us down the path to correctly mixing a desired colour - no more will you have to "make do" - instead, by understanding the "bias" of pigments, the outcome of mixing is no longer a matter of intuition or guesswork. These techniques should be taught in every art class in every school, and it really is simple enough for this to be practical. Another beauty is that it works with any medium to accurately predict the results of a mix of any colours whose bias is known. I cannot recommend this book highly enough for painters in any media who want to understand the mechanics of colour mixing and I thank Michael Wilcox for this cornerstone work.
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Summary: Highly overrated
Review: Michael Wilcox sets up a sham argument, oversimplifying and misrepresenting the primary color system in order to demonstrate its failings. As a couple of other reviewers have pointed out, anyone who has been painting for any time at all can tell you that you cannot mix all colors using only a single yellow, red, and blue. And those same people can also tell you that you don't need to buy a tube of every color made. Plenty of other far more useful books will tell you the same without subjecting you to a lengthy and dubious argument. I am not questioning the science that Wilcox presents, but the way that light behaves when it passes through a prism has little relationship to how tubes of paint react when combined. The only sure way to know and understand paint pigments is to experiment and make your own color charts. Can a book help you with that? Absolutely, and this one can too if 1) you already have some knowledge and experience, 2) you realize that the author has presented a sham argument, and 3) you are skeptical enough to question everything he says. While not all of the following authors have written books specifically about color, they each contribute far more to the painter's understanding of color (and paint!) than the Wilcox book: Stephen Quiller, Steve Allrich, Johannes Itten, Faber Birren, Helen Van Wyk, and Bill Creevy.
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Summary: New paradigm that works!
Review: Michael Wilcox's books will pay for themselves in the money you save on paint. This is a startling book which finally explains why some color mixes that you would expect to be good are just awful! When I made a color wheel for a water media class I asked the teacher why some of my mixed secondary colors were so poor. She said because of student grade paints. While that may have contributed a little considering what I was using for paints at the time that was the incorrect answer! Cotman paints weren't THAT bad. It was because neither she nor I understood the physics of paint mixtures. Paint mixtures aren't magic - they are a blend of light frequencies that behave in a predictable way. (Clue: The famous color wheel does not have a lot to do with it!) But people have a lot of difficulty giving up a paradigm - even if it is wrong. Time for a new one! Great book!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Revolutionary Clarification on Color Mixing
Review: Mr. Wilcox clears up centuries of hit and miss color mixing techniques. Before the theories presented in this work, learning how to mix colors used to be trial and error over and over again until memorized, usually just as Social Security kicked in. The text covers the basics of how light and color work together. Wilcox takes the next logical step and combines those principls with basic color-wheel theory and in doing so answers many questions that baffle beging painters and colorists in general. More illustrations of completed works utilizing these ideas would have made the book easier to warm up to but the concepts are just as effective nonetheless.
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Summary: Stop mixing mud. Wonderful artist's cheat sheet.
Review: Stop supporting the paint manufacturer. You don't have to buy every colour. Learn to mix your own vibrant hues and not mud. Even artists on the tightest budgets will find this a worthy investment.
Rating: 
Summary: Reconciles science class with art school
Review: The most useful thing I found in this book is that it reconciles what I learned in school about light and color with what I learned from art technique books about color mixing and the behavior of pigments. I didn't see much else new in the book, but this one bit of information has made color mixing (and other color theories/systems) a lot more sensible to me. Another thing that Michael Wilcox has done (in his Guide to Watercolor Paints) is pointed out the difference between paints made with a single pigment ingredient and paints made with a mixture of pigments. This has also simplified color-mixing for me. ...
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