I am so digging the color mixing, whether it be laying it into cane and pulling small stringer or working from one color to another in a gradation. A couple weeks ago I pulled out some more Creation is Messy Algae and Peace and did my normal 1:9 through 9:1 ratios and this is what I came up with:
I love so many things about mixing these methodical gradations of color. I learn a lot as the dark colors unfold and show their true essence. I would not have guessed that that beautiful soft almost pottery glaze-like color would emerge while going from this dense transparent algae color to white. It reminds me of a tea set that a friend from Korea gifted us.
It surprises me that the four beads on the right all have white in them of different amounts and get darker as they have less white but still look fully transparent but BAM! the 5th bead from the right is opaque all of a sudden.
It also always surprises me when there is a huge jump from one to the next, almost like there was some huge change in the proportions. There is a lot of room for more mixing in this string.
It interesting to me that that the 2nd, 3rd and 4th from the left don’t really seem to go in a logical order. When I see that I always think I need to re-do my test to make sure I ordered them right. I am pretty methodical though and keep them all in order and marked while on the mandrel.
Now I am curious to see what these colors do when layered in stringer for my micro mosaics and also when layered in dots on a bead, another thing that fascinates me. How you can mix the color but then get totally different colors when layering in different ways. Stacking dots gives a way different effect than when used in a murrini and stood on their sides. I bet the murrini even looks different when applied in a flame rather than fused.
And look there. The beads look even different than the color pulled into rod form. Crazy, I tell you. I wonder if Dietmar gets more consistent results (I’m sure he does) or if he also experiences strangeness that can only be due to the nature of how glass becomes the colors it becomes.
You know, I could go into a cabin up on a mountain and never come out and still not even scratch the surface of the properties of glass colors. More to come from this strand indeed.