OK, I goofed. I skipped my posts about the exercise and project in Chapter Eight of Polymer Clay Color Explorations. Well, this has been a rough week. What can I say?
Chapter Eight covers “Exploring Color Composition: Placement and Proportion.” It is worth your time to try the proportional and contrast table exercises in this chapter. Now that I am working on the collage box in the last chapter in the book, the exercise makes more sense than ever.
First, I mixed eight colors from my collage.
Collage with the colors I mixed on top
Then I sheeted the colors and laid them on a sheet of mud. The size of the color samples is determined by the proportion of that color in the collage. I eyeballed it. So, why is the placement of the colors important? The appearance of a color is affected by the colors around it. We all know this to some extent, but it helps to mix the colors and study them. At least it helped me.
You see how each color contrasts with another by laying out strips of all the colors across the proportionally-sized color samples. Take a look at the picture below with the balls of color on the left and the baked proportion and contrast tables on the right. The contrast table allows you to see how each color works with every other color at a glance. It’s much harder to do this with the balls of color. I can see how making the tables would be useful to audition colors for a project.
I will probably be making more of these contrast tables so I have more control over what my final project looks like, rather than my usual Hail Mary method of color placement. Of course, a little luck never hurts, either.
My next post on my journey through Polymer Clay Color Explorations will cover the project from Chapter Eight that puts the principles of the above exercise to work.
Ornamento 
Hi Martha,
You’ve done so well with your color explorations! We’ve all been the beneficiaries of your hard work with it, too. Thank you so much for all your reports.
Jackie
Thanks.