I see I've opened a can of worms...
To restate, perhaps a bit more clearly what I am asking for:
The ability to change fill and line color before drawing a new object and without having to draw/select/modify another object first.
As a secondary request:
The ability to see what colors will be used before drawing a new object in the status bar.
JiHO's suggested solution seems good to me. The only difference between it and what I was trying to propose is that in his proposal you must explicitly click a button to change the defaults. That is OK as one would already have the dialog open and the cursor nearby. And it has the side benefit of being able to make the style of any existing object the default with two clicks (one to select and two to make default).
Tav