Archive for the 'In Fiber' Category

Back To School

Published on September 3, 2010 in In Fiber and In Polymer. 17 Comments

Crayons Treat yourself to a box of 64 crayons and clear some space in your studio.  Its time for the return of Saturday School!

Starting next Saturday, September 11th, I will be expanding on the exercises in Lindly’s and my book, Color Inspirations.  Last year we covered Chapters 1 to 5.  This year we will start with some crayon warm-up exercises and then  move on to Chapter 6.

As a teaser for my upcoming “class assignments,” here’s an idea based on Chapter 2’s Pivot Bead exercise. Follow the directions for making pivot beads but, instead of making beads, cut the striped snakes into longer pieces and make split rings for a monochromatic chain featuring the many variations of your pivot color.

Enjoy Cynthia Tinapple’s new video tutorial of my technique for making split rings.  Here’s a worksheet with templates and dimensions for three different sized split rings. Split Ring Worksheet3

I’ve made strong and flexible split rings with Premo and Kato clay. They should work with most clays. You don’t have to add bendable clay though it certainly wouldn’t hurt to try.

There are endless variations possible. Explore and send me your photos!

Mixing Color Scales Video

Published on November 15, 2009 in In Fiber. 1 Comment

 

The idea for the Color Scales came when I was struggling to keep track of all the test mixing I was doing when I first started using polymer clay in the mid ’90’s.   I decided there had to be a better way to organize all the little bits of clay and tried all kinds of systems before hitting on this one.   I’m searching in my studio for some of those early attempts at organizing color samples and I’ll share them with you tomorrow.  For now, have fun mixing scales!

Using the Tasting Tiles

Published on October 25, 2009 in In Fiber. 0 Comments

tasting tiles 3The rally was lots of fun. Pioneer Courthouse Square was filled to the brim with people carrying 350 banners. I love my city!

Here are my Kato tasting tiles, including four muds made with equal parts of the various three primaries. The set-up for the muds is different from the book. I cut the squares of each primary color in half diagonally.

Note that even though I am taking these photos under full spectrum lights, they are not totally accurate. The blues are especially hard to capture.

 

Analyzing the Tiles 

I can tell just by looking at my collage that I probably won’t be using Magenta. It doesn’t appear in my collage and doesn’t make the secondary mixes I need.

Just for fun, I cut up a copy of my collage that appears in the book.  I was curious to see how much of each primary and secondary hue there would be. It turns out tasting tiles4that in my collage there are some slightly muted greens, a larger section of blues, lots of red orange and oranges, and a very large section of yellows with a good amount of ochres. There are no clear purples.  Instead of purples, there are many dark eggplant browns that match the Kato purples made with Kato Red.

 

Choosing Primaries

tasting tiles5If I was going to use Kato clay to match colors to my collage, I could rule out using Magenta very quickly.   The Red will give me the oranges and the eggplant purples that I need so its the better choice.  Since there is only one yellow, the big question is – which blue should I use? I would choose Kato Blue instead of the Turquoise because the greens I want are a little bit muddy.  I also like the dark brown mud that results from using the Blue. The tasting tiles helped me confirm that the Kato primaries for this collage are the traditional Red, Yellow, and Blue.  The colors I mix with these three primaries will give me a palette that matches my collage.

Weekend Extra Exercises

1.  Make a color copy of your collage and cut it up into color swatches. Don’t be too picky – stick to just the six hue families and one or two mud colors.

2. Sort the swatches into hue families and glue them onto a piece of 11″ x 17″ poster board. Because you will lose some of the collage as you cut and because you’ll end up overlapping some of the piece, you will probably only cover about 3/4 of the board.

3. Look at all the variations in each of the hue families. How much hue, value and saturation range is there?

TIPS

If you use more than one brand of clay, be sure to mark your tasting tiles with the brand.

If your white clay is crumbly out of the package, cut a slice of white that is the same thickness as your tasting tiles. Then you don’t have to make a snake. Just use the circle cutter to cut pieces from the slice to mix with the pieces cut from the center of the tasting tile.

Look at both the untinted and tinted parts of the tasting tiles to determine which primaries make the colors that match your collage.

When I was cutting up my collage I used small envelopes for each of the hue families. This kept all the little pieces from flying away or getting lost on the table in my studio. (Easy to do given the mess!)

FAQs

1. Why limit the clays to just three primaries?

We suggest starting this way so that you can learn how to mix colors using the fewest package colors. Sometimes you need more than three to get the colors you need and sometimes its just easier to start with a package color for each of the six hue families. That’s OK.

2. Can I use black if its in my collage?

I like to use a mixed black instead of a package black but if you have lots of pure black in your collage then you can use package black.

3. What should I do if I can’t decide between two primaries?

You can mix the two primaries together or you can choose to use both for your palette. There are no fixed rules. The goal is to be able to mix colors to match your collage.  A little exploration goes a long way toward making color mixing much easier.

Kato Clay Tasting Tiles

Published on October 25, 2009 in In Fiber. 0 Comments

tasting tiles2 Here is the first step in making the tasting tiles using Kato Clay.  I used Yellow, Blue, Turquoise, Magenta and Red.

Greens:  The first mixture of Yellow with Blue came out slightly muted. That is due to the Blue clay’s bias toward magenta. The Yellow with Turquoise  came out very clear.

Oranges: The mixtures of the Yellow/Magenta and the Yellow/Red both came out clear. That’s because there is no blue bias in either the Magenta or the Red.  You will often hear that magenta is a red with a blue bias. That is not true. Magenta is a true primary. Red is actually a magenta with yellow in it.

Purples:  The first mix is with Kato Blue. Kato Blue has a magenta bias, so it mixes with Magenta to make a clear purple. Kato Turquoise clay is a true primary blue. It doesn’t have much of a bias to either yellow or to magneta so when it is mixed with the Magenta , the Turquoise also makes a clear purple. But look at the mixtures with Kato Red! They are both brown instead of purple. That’s due to the yellow in the Red clay.  Remember that yellow is the third primary.  It combines with the other two primaries to make mud. If you need a clear purple in Kato clay, be sure to use Magenta as your primary, or buy the package Purple.

Today is the International Day of Climate Action and I am off to the rally in downtown Portland.  When I get back I will use the Kato Tasting Tiles that are now in the oven to show you how to find the best primaries for mixing the colors in your collage.