Tuesday, November 18, 2014

New Color Mixing for Dyers - Tool Acquisition - Hello Turquoise!

One goal of my grant is to acquire the tools of a working artist.   Here's a glimpse of the color reference notebook I made last week in Color Mixing for Dyers Part 1 with Carol Soderlund at PRO Chemical & Dye    This close to Halloween (O.K., I admit to procrastinating on putting out this post...) I can definitely say it's a resource of monster proportions.   

This sample book of Procion MX Reaction dyes includes 3 different color families created from different combinations of yellow/red/blue pure dyes.  We dyed over a 1000 color swatches in the workshop!

Each team of dyers was assigned a pure yellow, red and blue dye to combine to create a unique color family along with some fun side assignments.  The process went a long way to increasing my understanding of Procion MX Reactions Dyes.   One of the families used Deep Navy as it's blue component.   I picked Deep Navy as my blue for the grant as I liked the deep shades it could dye.   However, it turns out to be a bully...a little Deep Navy goes a long way!   It's a bit limiting too...and my head was turned by the lighter, brighter blues used by the other 2 groups.   So pretty, so tempting, so much more available range in brighter colors... Carol suggested that I add a "cousin" to my dye family of Tangerine, Strongest Red and Deep Navy.   Hello Turquoise!   Welcome to the the extended family of color happiness...

Turquoise dyed at  different strengths

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.  - Ralph Waldo Emerson


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