I was going to call a halt to this colour study but, having gone so far, it seemed a waste not to see it through. So it was back to colour mixing again this weekend. I abbreviated the system I had devised but even so, by the last few rounds I was losing the will to live. The constant repetition of measure, mix, test, clean tools, repeat. Concentrating so as to avoid mistakes - did I just measure two parts or three? If in doubt, scrap that one and start again.
So, why was I doing this again?
The original aim was to work out my own recipes for brown. Well, I achieved that. I now have 5 different standard mixes worked out. Two cool browns, two warm red browns and a kind of brown ochre.
As a bonus, I also mixed some lovely greys. ... And who would guess that the difference between a warm grey and a cool grey would be magenta . Now I've done it, of course I can see how that would work - but I don't think I'd have figured it out in advance.
And I think that was the larger benefit of doing this. Learning to understand my dyes better and reinforce my grasp of colour theory. To mix brown and grey I had to master how to balance the relative value and hue of those bright primaries so that they would literally neutralise each other.
For light relief, I used up left over dye as I went along, making marks on linen. I don't normally use linen but I'm interested in working with more textured cloth and I think the results have possibilities ...
Mark-making on linen