If you recall, we are trying to create a color scheme in clay that will evoke the same emotional response as this mosaic. We’ve selected the colors we want to replicate and now must decide what packages of clay we need to get us started. I do all of my caning in Sculpey III (read this, if you’d like to know why) so when I refer to clay colors, it will be Sculpey colors.
The blue dot looks to me like Teal straight out of the package. The green looks a lot like Leaf Green with some Sweet Potato. And the pink seems like Maroon with some Violet. I got to work mixing them up, eyeballing the proportions and making notes of what I used.
For the most part, my instincts were right on, although I had some trouble with the pink. I ended up also adding a bit of red and white. I was happy with the way the dark colors on the right mixed up, so I added some white to them to see how they compare with the original images. Remember, what I really want out of this color scheme is for those lighter colors to speak to me. No matter how accurately I match the dark clay to the dark dots on the paper, if the lightened versions don’t look enough like the photographs, I’ll need to adjust the recipes.
Unfortunately, I’m not sold on these. The blue needs to be a touch greener, the green needs to be a lot yellower, and the pink is just a tiny bit too purple. I tried again.
The samples on the right are the original recipes, and those on the left are new. I added some Granny Smith to the blue recipe, some Yellow to the green recipe, and some Red to the pink recipe. I think I am happy with the lighter versions of these colors and am ready to move on to the next step. Notice that the darker versions of the new colors don’t really match the big dots. That’s ok. They don’t have to, as long as their lighter counterparts are acceptable.
Next step: Compare our color choices to the mosaic as a whole and decide if we need any further tweaking.
I have thoroughly enjoyed following along on your Evolution of a Color Scheme (as well as all your blogging). Thanks for sharing. Sue C
My pleasure! It’ll be interesting to see where this color scheme goes – thanks for following along!