I remember being given a watercolor paint set when I was six, seven or eight. The set consisted of a coloring book filled with the outlines of objects and scenes to be painted, a small metal box and a paint brush. The box was divided into six or seven compartments that each held a piece of solidified watercolor paint. Each piece was a different color.
I had great fun mixing all the colors together and then smearing them on the paper; surprisingly, to my single-digit year old mind, the only color that emerged was brown. I had no one to teach me about mixing colors, or when not to mix colors. My book was soon a mess of brown stains and I lost interest in painting.
In the decades that followed my run-in with painting, I think a similar thing happened to my mind. It became filled with so many indiscriminately applied ‘colors’ that everything appeared to be ‘grey’; carelessly mixed watercolors and carefully mixed watered-down ideas don’t produce the same hue.
As an adult, it takes discipline and discernment to effectively mix ‘paint’. As a child, it takes not only a teacher but a guardian as well. ‘Paint’ that comes neatly packaged in little metal boxes is often toxic.