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 complementaries often resulted in duplicate colors where the lines crossed in the center of the triangle. I wanted a way to avoid the lines crossing and the ”Base Mixing” system was born.   I still use clay from these trays that I put together to test the base mixing idea. To help you get started with the base mixing system, here’s a video that I made two years ago with my nephew, Joey Sipos,  showing you how to make your own Color Scales Triangle. Do all the scales even if you just leave them on a tray and never string them up into a triangle! Its worth it just to see the beautiful colors in the middle.

Color Swatches

I started documenting my mixes with 2″ x 2″ swatches and ended up making a series of fan decks with two primary mixes for all the Fimo primaries.  The top photo shows the Carmine, Burgundy, and Red Fimo fan decks I made by mixing the reds to yellows and to the complementary green.  After baking the swatches, I wrote the formula on the back, drilled holes in the corners and used a head-pin to hinge the swatches into fan decks.  The second photo shows the Fimo swatches that I used as the palette for the Fable Vessel series.  The third photo shows a collection of the different types of swatches I’ve used over the years to document colors mixed with white.  The first batch is Fimo, the second is Premo, the third is Premo using the Watercolor Technique. I keep these swatches loose and stored in wooden boxes so I can pull them out when I need color inspiration.

Color Templates

Before I switched to color scales, I sometimes documented mixes by inserting the colors into holes punched in templates made from gray clay.  To get the lines and the patterns for cutting holes, I drew up the templates on the computer and made copies to transfer the design to the raw clay.  I then cut out the holes with a circle cutter and baked the template before adding the color mixes. This technique proved to be way too labor intensive for me . . . but it might be right up your alley.

 Color Scales

Color Scales came about when I needed an easier way to organize my mixes and see all the possibilities at a glance.  The top photo with the round beads shows some of the first color scales I ever made.  They were made in Fimo around 1994 and each scale was strung on wire so that I could mix and match them for different primary combinations.  I ended up with over 40  two-color scales that could be interchanged to get the palette I wanted.  The second photo shows some of the Fimo color scales going to white and black. The third photo shows a few bead strands that I made for project palettes; the bicone bead strand was made with Fimo, the other two are Premo. The last photo shows three bead strands that I made to document double primaries in Premo. The  orange scales were made from Cad Yellow, Zinc Yellow, Cad Red and Fuchsia.  For the green scales, I used Cobalt, Ultramarine, Cad Yellow and Zinc Yellow. The purple scales used Cad Red, Fuchsia, Cobalt and Ultramarie.  

As you can see, I never bothered to come up with one perfect way to keep track of all the test mixing I do in the studio.  The important thing is to do it – document it if you can – and move on to the next project!

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!