i found that buying a good box of colored pencils and constructing my own "color" wheel from those and then just playing around with the colors: opposites, same family-different hues& values, in abstract doodlings made me comfortable with color. Way cheaper than doing it with fabric to start. My brother was a pastel artist who made these sensational abstracts where he gradually moved from one color to the next by using a range of the one from light to dark etc. Guess that is what gave me the idea. I find i can do this even when i travel which makes it fun and easy.