Series 3: A Work in Progress

In all honesty, I've kind of been moping around lately. I blended the first one in this series (Raiya) back in April but just didn't get around to finishing the rest of the series. Yesterday I buckled down and finished it out however I'm still on the fence about the final colour: Lei.

As with the previous series, these were all blended for myself or my friends so the names follow suit. First up, was Raiya. The inspiration at best was cherry blossoms, but I was unable to secure pink flower shaped pieces of glitter so instead I incorporated butterflies into a pink base. It didn't come out right the first few tries but finally I got it to where I wanted it to be.

The second and third was Amy and Anita, respectively. "Amy" took two tries to get it right, but it got to the right colour almost immediately. Anita, came out exactly right the first time round.

The final one in the series was Lei, which didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to. It came out a bit too blue rather than the teal I wanted (it was intended for it to be closer to Anita). On top of that, I'm a bit worried about the mixture itself since it came out so... incorrect. I will likely revisit it soon as Lei would be the end to Series 3. Until then, the series is incomplete. 

Series 2 (Prototypes), Complete

After what I like to call a varietal of ailments, I finally managed to complete Series 2. This is basically practice round two and there were a lot of lessons learned here. Mostly that I should stick to smaller batches. I'll be doing one more series (practice) before figuring out what the next steps are.

Series Two is also named after my friends -- this time I decided to use something else that was close to their hearts in order to achieve a variety of colours. This decision came after the infamous "What is your favourite colour?" question went wrong (almost everyone I asked had said a variant of purple). 

They are officially named after the person they were "inspired" by but below I'll give you some alternate names to help you figure out what the underlying factor was. As aforementioned (at least, I think I mentioned this), the prototype series is not for sale and was only created as a lesson in colour mixing. 

On the left for this green blend is Tinker-Devi and on the left is Devi. Tinker-Devi is much lighter than it's counterpart. I revised the colour after swatches because I didn't feel that it hit the right notes of green. Of the swatches below, Tinker-Devi is the middle and Devi is the right. If I had to come up with another name for this one, it would likely be: "Stubbornness is Innate." (On the left of the swatches is Mariel).

Mariel, Tinker-Devi, and Devi.

Mariel, Tinker-Devi, and Devi.

Mariel came out spot on. At first I envisioned a darker purple but realized during the mixing process that this was very fitting for what it needed to be. An alternate name would like be: "Disappearing Act."

While I'm quite happy with the way "Jamie" came out, it wasn't exactly what I was hoping to achieve and ended up being more like another blend I had in mind for the future. In the swatches above, it is the middle one -- it is a silver colour with copious amounts of pink. An alternate name would like be "Oh Bother."

Kayla came out to be spot on and I was really happy with the way it turned out. An alternative name would likely be "The Golden Dress."

Finally there's Tabitha -- with the first go, I wasn't happy with the jelly like vibe it gave off (you can see the original in the previous photograph above on the right). It came out too light for my liking and what it was supposed to represent so I revisited it. The final colour was exactly what I wanted it to be. Alternative names would be: The Dragon, Breathing Green Fire

Series One: A Guild of Misfits

This is the first series of prototypes that I created in order to get into the swing of things. These are inspired by some characters that my friends and I play (albeit not together on the same servers). 

From left to right is Tenah (blue), Bizrot (rust), Shalori (lavender), and Damaged Goods (green). The first two (Tenah and Bizrot) were part of the first round that took a bit of time to figure out. Originally my aim for Tenah was to create a purplish blue with stars (they are present, but I didn't want too many). For Bizrot, I was going for more of a reddish gold however the bases conflicted. Obviously with round one, I didn't quite achieve what I wanted to, but I learned quite a bit throughout the process. 

While I am a huge fan of glitters, I wanted to create a series that had them light dispersed throughout rather than dominating. I felt as though I achieved what I needed to with the first two (though obviously I need more practice with mixing my reds [which is a problem I had back in my painting days]).

The second half was completed about two weeks later and this time round I was able to mix them much faster and kept my area cleaner than before. There were still some things to be learned nonetheless which I'll carry with me when I start Series Two.

Since these were inspired by my friends, I'm sending off a bottle of each colour to them. I don't exactly know if I'll be replicating these colours in the future (likely not Tenah and Bizrot since I forgot to take down the measurements in the first place), but they definitely gave me a good idea of what to expect.

I'm hoping to have the Series 2 of Prototypes completed by May and that set will also be training tools (so they will also be limited editions).