On first glance, I thought Linda Johansen's book Fabric Dyers Dictionary was the complete book on how to mix every possible combination. After all, there are about a thousand different formulas in it. You'd think that would cover it all.
This last week I've been doing the Rainbows in the beginning of her book. I mistakenly thought the next part would be variations on mixing the 'clears' with the 'muted'. But, she doesn't even go into that at all! I was surprised.
Seems to me, mixing the cool 'clears' with the warmer 'muteds' is where the wild variations would come into play. I think they became even more intriguing to me since they weren't in her book. I've had a lot of experience with this, mixing my acrylic paints. I had definite likes and dislikes in that regard.
I first had to devise a plan, which colors to mix with which colors. I even made a page in Excel and printed them out with numbers and yellow highlighting and everything, to keep it straight in my head.
Here's what I got:
The Yellows to the Reds:
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| Yellows to Reds variations |
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| Golden Yellow (warm) to Fuchsia (cool) |
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| Lemon Yellow (cool) to Chinese Red (warm) |
The Red to Blue Variations:
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| Chinese Red (warm) to Turquoise (cool) |
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| Fuchsia (cool) to Cobalt (warm) |
And then after all my planning and organizing I forgot one of the green variations. I'll get to it next week. But here is the one I did do:
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| Turquoise (cool) to Golden Yellow (warm) |
