Sunday, August 02, 2009

Chemistry Exercise Part 2

As promised, the second part of the dyeing exercise, using what Elin Noble calls "Jewel Tones". I used Fuchsia, Turquoise, and Sun Yellow (ProChem 108). The greens, oranges, and purples produced were clear and bright. These used only 2 dyes in combination. When using all three dyes, the results were less bright and moved into browns, some nice and some less so.



As I examined the results of the combinations of all three colors, I wondered how Elin came up the proportions of yellow, blue, and red that she chose. It certainly wasn't an arithmetic progress, like 10%, 20%, 30%, etc. And it didn't seem to be geometric, like 1/2, 1/4, 1/8. I'm certain that it has much to do with the relative strengths of the dyes and that the numbers she came up reflect that. I'm just curious.

Part 3 of the exercise combines the earth tones and the jewel tones to see how they differ from the straight combinations done so far. I could really get carried away here but I'm going to just be content with what I have. And maybe someday I will take Carol Soderland's class.