Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Purple Pastel Secrets

Diane Townsend 12 Purples&Violets; Unison Open Stock and the Uber Chart for Colors.


The new book, Multi-Brand Color Chart, from the publisher Huechroval, has certainly been a fun and fascinating tool for me to use in my search for more purples. My last post described my need for the blue side of purple, and concluded with my purchase of a set of Diane Townsends.

There is a secret reason
for my choices.


What about open stock, or individual sticks purchased separately? The search for these, using Marie Meyer's new book, was a delight and I was able to establish which purple pastels I wanted. There is a secret reason for my choices. More on that later.

The demo of the book was a great success. I didn't need to labor long in my search, and the answers were quick and efficient. It helps to have a particular brand in mind if you want to fast-track your solution, as I was able to do by selecting Diane Townsends for the set, and Unisons for Open Stock.

My local art store is currently selling Unisons in OS at a discount, and so I went with my shopping list, and the color chart under my arm, and efficiently found my purples.

In the future, I may wish to select from another brand using the
Huechroval charts. But then, I think the choice will rely on my knowledge of the feel and texture of the brand's sticks. Do I want a block-in pastel that tends to be harder? Perhaps I'll choose Windsor & Newton.

...found my purples.

About that secret reason for my hue choices. I had such a blanket need for the blue-purples that I was essentially starting from scratch. That drove me to start with the highest intensity sticks of my particular choices, and if you look for those in the MBCC book, you find a swatch with a nomenclature and a black frame, but no color illustrated - blank space! The reason is that these spaces represent a color populated by pigments, or pastels, but unavailable via the CMYK color space. Now, you know I had to buy those!

File this under "trivia". The color purple has its own domain name.

3 comments:

Observe Closely said...

" these spaces represent a color populated by pigments, or pastels, but unavailable via the CMYK color space"

Forgive me, but what does this mean?

Jan

Casey Klahn said...

Sorry, this science stuff is not my field, either.

Pigments come in a wide range of colors, but the CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key [black] on our computer monitors is limited to fewer colors - if memory serves me.

The Huechroval book has little boxes representing the colors, but they have to leave some blank, as they are printed in CMYK, but are trying to represent our yummy and powerful pastel colors.

Thanks for reading, Jan!

Unknown said...

Hello,
I am short on cash. I just graduated from college. And I am in the same boat you were. I am woefully short on blue-violet pastels. I want my purples to be cool and receed.I zoomed in on the photo you posted but I could not read the open stock numbers on the Unison pastels or the Diane townsend pastels. Could you please write down the serial numbers? Thanks so much.