Strength in Colors

Understanding color strength in your materials becomes key to creating even gradations in blends like the one here in a bracelet by Jana Honnerova.

Are any of you having color information withdrawals after nearly 2 weeks since we’ve had the chance to chat about color? I did miss it myself! And I do apologize that I wasn’t able to post anything last week. I had hoped to at least post an explanation for my lack of an article but, unfortunately, it has been a very chaotic time in my family’s world and, honestly, I simply couldn’t focus enough to write. I’ll catch you up on my world at the end of this post for those of you who are interested but let’s talk color a bit first and get back on track.

Math versus Cooking

If you have been reading this blog since early June, you essentially have all the tools to successfully mix colors with control and confidence. At least in an ideal world. What I mean by that ominous statement is that the information you have does provide you with the basis for successful pigment based color mixing but now I am going to challenge you to take ideal information to an erratic and uncertain pigment world.

You see, the information I gave you appears, and in some circumstances is, pretty predictable. It’s practically math since you can, theoretically, determine that if you mix this much of one hue and that much of another hue, add a small portion of white, black, gray, or a complementary color to further tint, shade, or tone it, and you will get a specific predictable color. However, you are working with pigments. That is more like cooking where you work with a generic ingredient list, imprecise measuring tools, and primary components whose flavor and texture are subject to the whims of mother nature.

Our clays, paints, dyes, and inks may not be subject to mother nature but the manufacturing of these artistic ingredients are subject to product changes due to the availability of materials and fluctuations in quality, storage, age, and, of course, brands and lines within those brands. These variations will inevitably affect the characteristics of our color mixing materials.

I could tell you a lot more about the variations in materials and why they affect each other the way they do but I’m not going to do that at this moment. Right now, let’s just experiment with what we’ve learned and with the most dominant issue you run into as a result of these variations – color strength.

Knowing thy Material

One of the most basic things you will need to become familiar with in your materials is that some colors are much stronger than other colors when mixed. What I mean by this is that you can put equal parts of 2 different colors into a mix but when one is stronger than the other, it will dominate the mix and look like you put a lot more of that color in than the other. For instance, in a lot of art materials including polymer clay, darker colors tend to have more pigment and so when mixed with a lighter color, you can readily recognize the darker color but a lighter clay color may have less pigment or a lot of white in it so it gets kind of drowned out. More saturated colors tend to do the same thing, espeically when they are more saturated as well as darker than the other color it is being mixed with.

This is also often true between inexpensive and high-quality brands or lines. The manufactuers of an inexpensive line may use less pigment or poor quality colorants to help keep their costs down so they can offer the materials at a cheaper price. If you mix an inexpensive brand with a high-quality brand, you should not be surprised if you find the high quality one is generally stronger when mixing, espeically in colors of similar color value or saturation.

Getting Your Hands Colorfully Dirty

This week, I’m going to suggest that you try to become familiar with the stronger and weaker colors in your preferred brand and line of materials. This exercise assumes that you’re using opaque material such as clay or paint. The exercises work differently with translucent colors such as dyes and inks, which can get quite complex, so I would suggest you practice with only opaque materials for now. We’ll talk about translucent materials later.

Color Bias Chart

1. Start by gathering a selection of colors. You can grab three primaries, three secondaries and black and white, or, if you’re ready for it, gather primary pairs based on the color biases we learned about in the last post. For bias pairs, pull 2 versions each of yellow, cyan, magenta. That means you’ll need a yellow that leans towards green and the other leaning towards orange, a cyan leaning towards blue and the other towards green, and a magenta that is more red while the other is more violet. You’ll want black and white as well.
2. Then prepare your materials for mixing. If you’re using polymer clay, sheet each color in your pasta machine on the same thickness and cut with a single size punch cutter so that each “part” is one punch of clay. If you are working with paint, use approximately the same size daubs of paint and use them directly out of the tube or at least don’t dilute them.
3. Start with just the black and white. Mix one-part white and one part black together. Mix them completely to get a gray.
4. Pull out your grayscale or print the one here. (Click on the image to get a large version to print.) Check the resulting gray of your mix against the grayscale here.  I’m guessing it’s going to be pretty darn dark instead of a middle gray (5 on my chart). In general, black clay or paint has a ton of pigment which means you probably need a lot of white to make a middle gray.
5. Try it again but this time use one part black and four parts white. Now, where does that land on the value scale? If it’s still not a middle gray, make another mix, changing the proportions to include more white or more black depending on whether it needs to be lighter or darker to reach a middle gray.
6. What was the final proportions to get that middle value? Make note of that. Now you’ll have an idea of how much a bit of black can darken a color or how much white you’re going to need to lighten a color. Yes, it will take practice to get something exactly as you want it but just becoming familiar with the strength of your black versus your white will get you there a lot quicker as you move into tinted and shaded color mixes.
7. Now, choose a yellow and your darkest color (that is not black) from the colors you gathered. It’ll probably be the cyan that leans towards violet or a blue. Do the same thing. Start by mixing the exact same amounts and see which color seems to dominate the mix. Chances are, it will be the darker one, although in some lines, there are some pretty strong yellows and some pretty weak blues. What did you come up with? Adjust your proportions and mix them again until you have a sample where neither one seems to dominate. How much of the weaker color did you need to acheive that?
8. Finally, mix a set of secondary colors if you gathered primary color biased pairs to work with, or mix tertiary colors if you gathered a set of primary and secondary colors in your materials. (Review this post if needed.) See how much you need of one color versus the other to create a secondary or tertiary color that neither color you mixed with dominates. Make mental or actual notes on which colors dominate a mix.

As you do this, you will begin to become truly familiar with the strength of the colors in your material. This will be absolutely essential when we get down to masterful color mixing. It also will save you a lot of wasted materials, allowing you to mix small amounts that don’t end up being large amounts because you have to keep adding the weaker color to get it where you want. In fact, when you start mixing with unfamiliar colors or a new brand, do this exercise to become quickly familiar with the variations in colors. And if you end up with some really yummy new colors doing these exercises, save the sample and note the proportions so you can mix it for a future project!

Worst Year Ever

2020. Worst … year … ever. I’m just putting that out there. It started with friends getting choked out from the terrible fires in Australia, then there was the pandemic, then the economic fallout, then there were the not new but spotlighted tragedies that led to racial protests and riots, and now, closer to home, my family and I are trying to fathom our own personal tragedy.

Many of you who follow me on Facebook already have heard that we lost an important family member last week–a brother-in-law who my siblings and I grew up with. He was no less than a brother to us and he married the sister I consider my closest confidant. Theirs was the kind of relationship we always said the rest of us aspired to have and they were the two I came to in my darkest days. It just breaks my heart to think of him gone and to watch my sister and her kids as they try to comprehend this loss and rebuild their homelife without him. So, I am here with them in Colorado now, having driven through the night the Wednesday before last when his previously hopeful fight with cancer went suddenly very wrong. Now my siblings and I are just trying to help them ease into this awful new reality, in a world that is already so full of uncertainty and chaos. There is a lot to do. There is a lot to talk through. It has been, and will be, my priority for the next few weeks.

There is not much more to say at this point but I did want you to know why last week got missed and why there might be some irregularities in my posting and the answering of emails. I am still a one-woman business at this time, unable to hire anyone due to changes in California laws, not to mention the pandemic. So, while I do what I can for my family here, I can continue to fill orders and write these posts but timing might be a little off here and there. There is a comfort in the familiarity of writing these articles and dealing with day-to-day business things but there are definitely moments when the circumstances of our lives right now don’t allow for a regular schedule. I know you will forgive me if things get wonky and I thank you ahead of time for your understanding. I believe I will be back in California by mid-August and will figure out my new normal then.

I do hope you all are staying well, safe, and healthy and are caring for each other as best as we can in this crazy year.