In our quest to build a color scheme from the mosaic pictured above, we have developed three color recipes and added some white so that we have six colors. Now we have to decide if we are happy with these hues. We’ve managed to match these colors pretty closely with those that we originally picked out of the mosaic, but that may not be enough. No matter how scientific we try to be about getting where we’re going, we really only know when we’ve arrived by our gut reaction. Right now I’m going for an emotional response more than anything else. When I look at that pile of clay, does it “feel” the same as when I look at the mosaic of images?

My gut tells me I still have some changes to make. For one, the green is still not yellow enough for my taste. Additionally, I think I may have made a mistake with the pink I chose to copy. I’m now thinking that I would prefer a slightly warmer pink, with less of a tendency toward the purple. I’m also thinking that I’m making these recipes too complicated at this point. I’m going to start from scratch with the green and the pink.

I like these colors. I think they’re going to give me the feeling I’m looking for. For those of you playing along at home, these are the final recipes I used for each color:

• BLUE: 3 Teal + 1 Granny Smith
• GREEN: 3 Granny Smith + 2 Yellow + 1 Sweet Potato + 1 Leaf Green
• PINK: 3 Red + 2 Yellow + 1 Maroon

The colors are Sculpey III colors. Additionally, Teal and Maroon are discontinued colors, that I just happen to have stockpiled. Polyform has a handy PDF with formulas for recreating the discontinued colors, if you need it.

We won’t truly know if we chose well until we have a nice variety of canes piled up to look at. Here’s a little teaser. I’m not sure how these colors are going to work out, but we can find out next time…

…after I’ve replenished my supply of Yellow Sculpey

We’re perilously close to needing a name for this color scheme. Hope you’ve got your thinking caps on!  As I mentioned before, I’m going to let you make suggestions for what to call this color scheme.  The owner of the winning entry will receive a little prize - not to mention the honor and prestige of having his or her name forever associated with those colors on the Polka Dot Creations website.  But more on that next time!

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

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.

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

If you recall, last time we used three online color palette generators to help us pull the dominant colors out of our mosaic. Now our job is to pick our favorite choices from those palettes, narrow them down to three main hues, and determine our final colors.
I pulled all three palettes into Paint Shop Pro and chose four of my favorite blues, greens, and pinks to help me narrow it down. Looking at these choices helps me to see what hues will look the most appealing together.

And there is one more option… I can use the color picker in Paint Shop Pro to just grab my favorite colors directly off of the mosaic. As it turns out, this is a good thing, because none of the pinks that the palette generators spit out were the “right” ones. I Sometimes you just have to go with your gut. The image above represents the three colors that appeal to me the most together, and I got them directly from the pictured photos. Despite the fact that we didn’t ultimately go with any of the hues from the palette generators, I don’t consider that a wasted step. Under different circumstances, where I didn’t already have a particular vision of what I wanted before I started, it would have yielded perfectly acceptable results.

So, this is the color scheme I want, but we can’t stop here.

Look carefully at the image above. These tiles represent the Blue color scheme. The tile with the stripes shows the three main colors (plus white) of this scheme. See how dark they are? Nearly all of the canes in this color scheme are much lighter than those stripes. That’s because most of the cane designs don’t use the base colors as-is, but rather mix them in varying proportions to white. If we choose our favorite pink, aqua, and lime colors and use them as-is, the resulting canes will actually be much paler than what we were hoping for. We need to start with darker versions of our favorite colors.

Since I generated these colors in Paint Shop Pro in the first place, I just used PSP to darken them uniformly. These are our base hues for our new color scheme.

Are you getting excited to see these colors translated into clay? You’re in luck - that’s our next step. Start coming up with ideas for how to name this color scheme while you’re waiting. There’s a contest a brewin’!

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

We’re creating a new color scheme together, and our first step was to make a mosaic of photos that included colors we might want to use. Our task now, is to use that mosaic to generate a color palette, from which we can choose our three main colors. A simple Google search for “palette generator” yields an impressive number of results. I chose three free tools to try.

First was from Big Huge Labs and the results are pictured above. I see some attractive blues and greens in this palette, but the pinks don’t do it for me. I want something much pinker.

This swatch is from DeGraeve.com’s Color Palette Generator and I’m even less happy with these pinks, although the aqua in the vibrant column is a really nice one.

Now, this one, generated by Jeff Minard’s Color Palette Generator is much closer to what I want pink-wise. And I think perhaps I can find an appropriate blue and green here as well. Additionally, there’s nothing stopping me from choosing colors from all three palettes and using them together.

Next step? Making the final color choices.

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.

I’m creating a new color scheme, and I’m taking you with me. Interested? Here’s the scoop: Normally when I plan a new color scheme, there is very little actual planning involved. I have a vague idea of at least one hue that I want to use, and the rest comes about while standing in the clay aisle of Michael’s, comparing little packages to each other. I thought it might be fun to go a little deeper this time.

Plus, I’m going to let one of you name the color scheme and win a little prize when we’re done. Sound like fun? Ok, here we go!

I have a few self-imposed rules that I follow when making up color schemes:

• There must be three distinct hues.
• They must be vibrant, because over the course of canemaking, they will be lightened to varying degrees.
• They must look nice together (of course!)
• There must be one additional “lightening” color, usually white, but sometimes tan, gray, yellow, or cream.

So, let’s start considering colors, shall we? I know that I want to use some form of aqua and olive, along with a bright pink to complement those greens. I’ve spent enough time favoriting things in flickr over the last few months to know that I am very drawn to these colors right now. But how do I choose exactly what forms of these colors I want?

I am beginning by looking through my favorite photos and choosing the ones that are pleasing to me in that colorway. I used the free mosaic utility from Big Huge Labs to make the image you see at the top of this post. The feeling I get when I look at these pictures is the same feeling I want to get with my new color scheme.

The next step? Translate this mosaic into a palette of colors from which we can choose our three main hues. Stay tuned!

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Originally published at Polka Dot Creations. Please leave any comments there.