I was going to call a halt to this colour study but, having gone so far, it seemed a waste not to see it through.  So it was back to colour mixing again this weekend.  I abbreviated the system I had devised but even so, by the last few rounds I was losing the will to live.  The constant repetition of measure, mix, test, clean tools, repeat.  Concentrating so as to avoid mistakes - did I just measure two parts or three? If in doubt, scrap that one and start again.  

So, why was I doing this again? 

The original aim was to work out my own recipes for brown.  Well, I achieved that.  I now have 5 different standard mixes worked out.  Two cool browns, two warm red browns and a kind of brown ochre.  

As a bonus, I also mixed some lovely greys.  ... And who would guess that the difference between a warm grey and a cool grey would be magenta .  Now I've done it, of course I can see how that would work - but I don't think I'd have figured it out in advance.  

And I think that was the larger benefit of doing this.  Learning to understand my dyes better and reinforce my grasp of colour theory.  To mix brown and grey I had to master how to balance the relative value and hue of those bright primaries so that they would literally neutralise each other.  

For light relief, I used up left over dye as I went along, making marks on linen.  I don't normally use linen but I'm interested in working with more textured cloth and I think the results have possibilities ...  

Mark-making on linen