My husband, Hugh and I, went down a rabbit hole while researching colour. Here is a link if you would like to start at the beginning .First entry Here are the most well known harmony patterns. Have fun: Split Complement Two hues on either side of the complement. Double Split Complement Two pairs of complements that lie next to two complementary hues. Tetradic Harmony Rectangular - Two pairs of hues, but wider than double split complementary. Square - Four equidistant Triadic Three colors that are widely separated on the color wheel. Dyads Two colors that are close but not directly adj ..read more

My husband, Hugh and I, went down a rabbit hole while researching colour. Here is a link if you would like to start at the beginning .First entry  Some combinations of the three unities and the three contrasts have their own names: When colors have a big contrast in hue paired with extreme chroma, they might get the fancy name of "simultaneous contrast" or "op art". When you have too many of them, they sometimes get called "clashing".   High value is often combined with high chroma to provide a light and bright design that usually has positive emotional meaning. Following the same ..read more

My husband, Hugh and I, went down a rabbit hole while researching colour. Here is a link if you would like to start at the beginning .First entry Contrast of Hue: colors are not close neighbours. * Complementary or Opposing: colors are directly across the color wheel from each other. These pairs will have maximum Contrast of Hue. Because they are complements they will usually mix to some kind of dark neutral, giving some contrast in value and chroma that could be part of the design. * "Warm and cool" contrast is an informal way of speaking about groups of hues for design purposes, especially ..read more

Analogous colour - Earring by Shelley Atwood   My husband, Hugh and I, went down a rabbit hole while researching colour. Here is a link if you would like to start at the beginning .First entry Unity of Hue: color is limited to a narrow range of hues  Monochrome:  one hue, usually from one pigment. Contrast in value and chroma provide the design. Analogous or Adjacent: colors that are neighbours on the color wheel. This is Unity of Hue extended a little wider, but usually no more than three hues maximum. Very popular. Warm or Cool Themes: If a design is all "warm" hues ..read more

I know - " Always follow the directions for curing your clay." But what if you could cure your Cernit and Kato Clay at the same temperature? I have my oven outside so I don't have to be as cautious as  those with an oven in their studio. So I arranged 5 sets of clay on a tile and removed one set after each curing. Each cure was for 40 minutes at 160C or 320F. The final set was cured 5 times.  You can see some color shift with Cernit but more with Kato Clay. The Cernit Opaline shifted even less than the white. Unfortunately I do not have any Cernit Opaline white but I will teat it a ..read more

My husband, Hugh and I, went down a rabbit hole while researching colour. Here is a link if you would like to start at the beginning .First entry A final important mixing tip: if you need really good repeatable color matches, you can't get them by adding dabs of this and smidges of that to one batch of art material. Professionals measure quantities and make a mixing line or "scale" between two starting colors, pigments, glazes or whatever.   A mixing line is usually stepped in geometric ratios where each step is either half or double its neighbour. When dried or fired or baked, the resul ..read more

A decision has been made. You have to choose 6 colours to from the Cernit One line, they would be Xmas Red 463, Yellow 700, Green 600, Blue 200, Violet 900, and White 027. I will explain my choices in the weeks to come because they were not always easy. I never expected to make as many colour as I have. It  is a good lesson to me on how to approach a colour. I the future the first thing that I would do is make a value line for each of the colours. A value line takes about half the time of a stepped colour. This time I have gone back and made value lines of all the colours, even the ones ..read more

My husband, Hugh and I, went down a rabbit hole while researching colour. Here is a link if you would like to start at the beginning .First entry Adding white or black is the simplest way to change a color's value. People sometimes suggest adding other non-neutral colors to adjust value, but since the color will also shift hue, this advice is mainly for painters uninterested in precise control over color.   Colors with added white are called tints. Beginner's sets of paint or clay never include enough white for designer colors, so always keep some extra on hand.   The old rules say ..read more

  The biggest challenge to mixing Cernit colours was deciding the best starting colours. Limiting the colours that you start with makes it easier to mix colours predictably. After eliminating all the neutral colours like brown, grey, desarturated colours like olive green and grey  blue, and all the pastel colours, I picked 8 colour with the highest or brightest chroma.  The goal is to get the most chomatic colour line with the least variables. I'm retrospect I should have mixed value lines for all the colours first to determine mixing strength. That would have given me mo ..read more

Yummy tints and sweet saturated colours. My husband, Hugh and I, went down a rabbit hole while researching colour. Here is a link if you would like to start at the beginning .First entry Saturation and chroma are both measures of colorfulness (intensity) but are not technically identical. I think of chroma as "the colorfulness of bright". I think of saturation as the colorfulness of rich, deep, pigments with strong mixing power.   With some intensely saturated pigments, especially transparents with high mixing strength (aka high tinting strength), carefully adding white can incre ..read more