Color Inspirations

I’ve been dying to get to this project. I just love this cane. After much thought and discerning with my collage and tasting tiles, I decided that the primary colors for my palette are cadmium yellow, fuchsia & ultramarine blue. The motor for my “Dream Machine” finally arrived so I made a seriously big skinner blend with these colors.

I used most of this blend to make a very large cane so I would have leftovers to use for another project. As you can see, my black & white cane went a little off center and didn’t stay straight throughout but I love it in spite of these imperfections. I have all the petals formed and ready to go into the oven. After they are baked and strung, I will compare them to the colors in my collage and see if I have the right primaries.

Making the collage was fun but challenging.  I’m happy with the final result but it doesn’t look at all like the ones in the book.  I’m wondering if I used too many colors.  When I was finished I thought everything looked good except the dark blue.  I really wanted to have blue in it and this was the only blue I found that even came close.  Every time I looked at the collage, my eye went right to that blue so I went on a search for a better one.  I did find one that I liked better and used it instead.

I sprayed my collage with PMN-II and put a piece of raw clay on it to see if it would leach.  I will leave it on overnight to see what happens.  If you are not familiar with PMY-II (Preserve Your Memories-II) it is a scrap-booking product that puts a coating on paper, photos etc. that makes it waterproof but it doesn’t change the appearance of the paper at all.  Some people are using this product on polymer clay but I haven’t tried that yet.

I wanted to try the pivot beads again this time using the blue pearl clay.  I gave my beads a little twist this time  for a variation.  I love the finished product.

Exercises from “Color Inspirations”

Package color samples

When I get a new clay book I go through cover to cover taking in all the pictures and highlights.  After that I mark a project or two that I want to try and usually get to it in time.  With this book I started out the same with a cover to cover scan of the pictures.  After that I immediately went back to read all the “Artist Spotlight” pages and  loved them.

I usually skip over the beginning basic stuff but felt compelled to read it all beginning with the “Foreword”  (very nice Cynthia.)  My hope is to do all the exercises and projects as I go along.  Thus far I have done the package testing,  made my value sorter and am working on the pivot tiles and beads while I collect color samples for my collage.

Pivot Tiles using Kato Turquoise, Magenta & Green

Pivot tiles using Premo Blue Pearl and Green Pearl

I started out making my pivot tiles with Kato clay.  Adding the black drastically changed all three properties of the color.  I switched to Premo Pearl colors and made a tile using the blue pearl. There is no purple pearl so I added red pearl and did not like the result.  I made my own purple pearl by adding white pearl to the non-metallic purple and used it and liked this a lot better. 

Adding the black to the premo colors makes only a subtle change and I like it a lot better.  I loved the hues I got with the blue pearl so I made another one using the green pearl and I really like it too.