Color Wheel, anybody use it?

Yeah, just wait till you have to go HOME with the unhappy woman.... at least at work they eventually left the store, eh?

Quincy,

You only think you're prepared!

The old saw "Hell hath no fury like a women scorned" is one word too long. It should be "Hell hath no fury like a woman"!

I-beam

It is't just a problem with modeling paints. I worked a year for a paint store and you haven't lived until you've supplied some high priced wall paper (100 to 150 bucks a roll) to a matronly empty-nester who is completly remodeling her home now that the kids are gone. They always seem to come back a couple of weeks later because "we came up one roll short, would you order it for me please?". Well you can only order it in double rolls, with no returns but she insists. So when it arrives, guess what doesn't match? Guess who's REALLY unhappy it doesn't match? Guess who is REALLY, REALLY unhappy about the no return policy on special orders? And guess who has to take the brunt of all the unhappiness? Learned a lot about mixing and matching colors that year. (Also learned a lot about middle aged females at the same time - which probably prepared me for marriage - lol)

Thank's pals. Nice to hear your experiences and I learn much from you all.

Here's one of my favourite colour related websites:

http://www.colorblender.com/

I myself just got a color wheel the other day to use for changing the shade of model paint. The way I understand that model's use color wheels is to find out what color to add to a color to lighten or darken the base color for weathering or other such stuff..

The color wheel is based on pure mathematics so in theory it works. Now the gotcha's: All bets are off when dealing with model paints, especially different brands ... and also different lots .... and also paint that has been opened vs not opened ... and paint from different hobby shops ... and well you see what I mean. It really comes down to pigment density and that is close to impossible to measure. What I mean is one drop of goopy testors yellow (in the little bottles) contains alot more pigment than one drop of model master blue and you will get mostly yellow if you mix them not pure green like the color wheel says. If your paints are fairly equal in density the color wheel does work

BTW: the color wheel works in 2 other dimensions besides the standard round circle. Up = degrees of tint (ie add white) and down = degrees of shade (ie add black)

Example: dunkelgelb (german dark yellow) in color wheel terminology is a shade of yellow with a very small amount of green OR (approx.) 5-7 drops yellow + 1 drop green + 1 drop black.

When I was printing a few years ago we used a PANTONE reference book,
http://www.tradeprintsupplies.co.uk/shop/products_view.php?prod=263

This book gives you exact amount of ink(or paint in our case) to mix.

Can't be much different to use as long as your basic colours all match (red,blue yellow & black) as every printed thing is made up of only 4 basic colours + gold or silver etc.

Scott.