e-fg-zine
the newsletter for wood crafters on-line
 Issue #3
April 2003
 Greetings.
A warm welcome to all my new readers, and welcome back to the rest who've been here for a while.
I'm doing something a bit different with this issue. I'm sending it out in two
installments.
The past two months have been, well, more wild and busy than usual. *Just* when I started work on a brand new
website (I'll tell you more about it in part 2), I found myself running between appointments and meetings,
for my special needs son. I've been thanking my stars that working online isn't a strict 9 to 5 schedule!
The long and the short of it is that the issue will be
sent in two parts.
All the best wishes for your wood crafting adventures,
Wendy Maki,
Faux Grain.
War is not porridge.
--Proverb Gikuyu (Kenya)
CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE
Article: A Colorful Pet
Peeve
Tip: How To Identify the 3 Primary Colors in the
Pigments You Use
Recommended books & links: Color and More Color
Marketing your crafts on-line:
by Wendy Maki
Everyone's got a *pet peeve.* Mine is color wheels.
Recently, my son, who's in grade 6, was learning about color. Sure enough, the color wheel he'd painted up as
an exercise was the same old standard red-blue-yellow wheel that most of us were taught. You know the one:
purples bordering on mud, greens that are more olive than anything else.
What's wrong with that? Well, it *does* get the basic concept across, but it isn't quite right.
I often wonder how many of us, or our kids, give up on color wheels, and never use them -- because they just
don't *work.*
The *problem* is that the standard simple red-blue-yellow color wheel uses the wrong colors!
The only *right* color is the yellow. The blue is the wrong blue. The red is the wrong red.
The *mistake* comes from the fact that there are *two* different color wheels, one for mixing light (sun...),
and one for mixing pigment (like paints and inks).
Mix the three *light* primaries together and you get white light. Mix the three *pigment* primaries together
and you get black.
So, what are the *right* colors for paints and other pigments?
Take a look at the ink cartridge in a color printer. What colors do you see?
Cyan, *not* an ultramarine blue. A magenta red, *not* a crayon or Christmas red. And yellow. *Those* are
the colors that you need if you are going to create any other color by mixing pigments. Printers have
known this, but artists, and budding artists, aren't always taught this.
Try it out for yourself the next time you want to mix a purple. Use a cyan blue color with a magenta
type of red. Voila. You can come up with an amazing
range of clear and colorful purples. Try cyan with yellow, and you'll discover a range of wonderful
clear greens.
Like most people, I learned the standard color wheel, at school and in the books I looked at. And I muddled
along making various shades of *mud* until...
I was several years into my university art training, and I had the chance to take a wonderful color theory
course from an amazing woman. She taught us a color
wheel like none I had ever seen before... and it worked!
I haven't used any other wheel since, and it always works. I always know I can take just 3 colors plus
white and black, and create *any* color I could ever want, as clear and brilliant, or as complex or
subtle as I need.
The Christmasy red that you see so often as the primary red on simple color wheels, like those taught
at school, is really a *secondary* color on a pigment
color wheel. It's *created* by mixing magenta-red with yellow! Purples made by using a Christmasy red
turn muddy because that kind of red brings yellow into the mix.
******
When you have all three primaries in one pigment mix, the color starts heading toward black. Voila,
*mud.*
******
The same idea goes for the ultramarine type of blue that's usually shown as the primary on simple color
wheels. That, too, is really a secondary *pigment*
color. It's made from cyan *plus* magenta-red. If you mix a green using ultramarine blue, it will introduce
red into the mix. Cyan blue + yellow + red, and you head towards black again. Voila, olive.
Knowing this, not only can you create cleaner mixed colors when you want to, you can also create
sophisticated mixed blends. For example, you can
accurately copy many of nature's greens by allowing a bit of the red end of the spectrum into the mix.
Even if you don't paint artistically or decoratively, understanding how pigment colors mix can be really
useful when you're trying to paint your home or
furniture *just the right color.* It's *really* helpful when a color doesn't work out the way you
want it to. ;-)
Here's a simple way to identify the true primaries for whatever pigments you are using.
Pick out three colors that are clear and strong, and that seem to be possible primaries: yellow, cyan, and
magenta-red. (Compare them to a computer printer ink cartridge to narrow it down.)
Mix two of those colors together. If you end up with a muddy or greyed-out tone, it means that one or both
of the pigments you started with isn't quite a true primary. One or both has a bit of the third primary
in it (or some white or black added). The more muddy the result, the more of the third primary (or white
or black) has found its way into the mix.
From there, it's just trial-and-error, and a process of elimination. For example, try a slightly different
red, and see if the test mix produces a clearer and
truer result than the first red you tried.
You've identified your 3 primaries when you can mix 3 other separate clean, clear, and true colors using
them:
-
green (from cyan + yellow),
-
ultramarine blue (from cyan + magenta-red), and
-
clear red (from magenta-red + yellow).
The 3 secondary colors that you've mixed up form the RGB palette that you find used on computer monitors.
That's because those secondaries just happen to be the light primaries!
The majority of pre-mixed decorative painting acrylic paint colors aren't anywhere near primary pigment
colors. You need to pick colors that are closest in the product line to being artist's quality to find
the colors that are primary or close to it. Or, you might need to try a different brand altogether.
Also, some blues that are named *cyan* have some yellow (or white) mixed into them, so they aren't
always the exact blue that you need. Many *magenta*
colors have blue mixed into them. You'll probably need to experiment to find the right ones.
Add white and black to your 3 pigment primary colors, and you can literally mix up *any* color you could
ever need from just 5 tubes or jars of pigment. Even
if you don't come up with 3 perfect primaries, you'll produce much better mixed colors, once you've
identified the ones that are closest to the primaries.
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Creative Color: A dynamic approach for artists and
designers.
By Faber Birren
Schiffer Publishing, Ltd. 1987.
ISBN: 0887400965
For over 20 years, this was the only colour theory book I owned. Any book written by Faber
Birren, a giant in the world of colour theory is a good choice, but this little book is quite special. It demonstrates how to create special effects like fog, rainy days,
colored light sources, through the use of color.
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Painter's Guide To Color.
By Stephen Quiller.
New York, Watson-Guptill Publications. 1999.
ISBN: 0823039137
This newer book is based on the *Quiller Color Wheel*, invented by the author.
For painters, it's a fantastic reference. Quiller identifies pigment primaries in many different paints
and brands, specifically, to use with the Quiller Wheel. Although his wheel is slightly different than the one I learned from my wonderful instructor, it *works*
just as well. For painters, it can be even more useful because it identifies the color qualities of numerous
specific paint formulations, by brand and name.
More than that, the book is loaded with pictures that will just knock your socks off colorwise. There's no
way to look at the book without wanting to pull out your own brushes and start playing with color.
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Marketing your
crafts on-line:
Right now, I've got 3 free ebooks that you can download directly from my site.
I'm not sure how long I'll keep these downloads posted. The space they take adds up, and sometime I'll
need to make room for new things.
To download them, all you need to do is *right-click* on the link, and that should open up a window where
you can *Save Target As* to save it to your computer.
These links go directly to the books themselves. If you'd rather read them online, then just click the
link normally.
Download #1
I was looking back over the time since I first decided to come on-line,
remembering the *light-bulb* moments and *turning-points.* One such moment was
reading the course that's in the first ebook.
Since then, I've gone on to read many other things written by Ken Evoy, and I'm now using his SiteBuildIt!
package to build my new web site (more on that farther down).
The Affiliate Masters course has a lot of useful
information about building a site around any kind of special interest, even though the course's particular
focus is on building income from affiliate programs.
One reason I've been able to get as much traffic from search engines as I have is this course.
You can download the course in pdf book
format.
It's a large file, 970 kb, so you might prefer to get
the course by email.
Download #2 [NO LONGER
AVAILABLE HERE]
For those of you that were with me for the second
issue, you'll know that I've been paying close attention to the discussions that are raging in the
small online business community about the problem of getting legitimate emails delivered and received.
I don't want to dwell on it again in this issue, so I'll just point you to a great little book I
stumbled across.
Did you know that you could miss out on legally binding notices that can now be sent via email?
I didn't -- until I read Sandra Bowman's
book. Inspired by her own experiences, she wrote it to educate others,
and takes a balanced approach to the subject of spam and email blocking. She's letting websites give her book away, so you can
download it directly from my site.
(Sorry, the exe ebook format only works for Windows users, so it won't work on Macs.)
Right now, small businesses online are the hardest hit, but it's
definitely affecting all email communication, some way or another.
Download #3 [NO LONGER
AVAILABLE HERE]
Chuck McCullough's Search Engine Primer is still
available. If you're building a web site, it's a really good basic reference to have on hand. It covers how you
need to put web pages together, and other topics, that will help the search engines to find you.
(Sorry, the exe ebook format only works for Windows users, so it won't work on Macs.)
Forums are a popular way for craft sites (or any web site) to build an online community. Until now, there
hasn't been much around to help someone learn how to build one, or how to make postings that draw traffic.
With these two new releases, there's bound to be a rash of copy-cats coming out with titles on the
subject.
Michael Green of How To Corp has added forum building to the list of subjects covered by his popular line of
How To products.
How To Start A Forum: Discover How To Start Your Own Discussion Forum With
Ease. The only internet guide to starting & running
your own forum.
On the flip side, joining forums and becoming an active poster to discussions, can be an effective way to become
known in a niche topic, and attracting visitors to your own website or newsletter. There are definite
dos-and-don'ts, though, to this no cost traffic building strategy.
Last, but not least...
My fauxgrain.com craft marketing page links to an unusual web-hosting package offered by Ken Evoy of
SiteSell. I've been itching to try it out myself, but I held off because of the time fauxgrain takes. Finally,
my new year's resolution to myself was to *just do it*!
Soooo... I'm building a new website using SiteBuildIt!. You can peek at it
to see where it's heading at WebBizWorkbook.com
. (It's for beginners interested in learning
more about starting an internet business.)
I'm finding that using SiteBuildIt! is a totally different experience than building and maintaining
my fauxgrain.com site, which I do the *normal* way.
It's strange to say, but I keep thinking I *must* be forgetting *something.* I'm
definitely not a *techie* but I'm having to re-adjust to how *little* tech stuff
there is using SiteBuildIt! Many things that I'm used to doing myself, *it* does behind-the-scenes
automatically.
It also has several powerful time-saving features that really blow a hole in my usual excuses for being
slow at all this. I can *get away with it* when a task
takes a couple of weeks of slogging research, but it doesn't quite sound the same when I only have to click
a couple of buttons to accomplish the same thing. ;-) *It* is very *results-oriented.*
Am I? Hmmmm.
One of the most interesting things I'm finding is that it's actually *hard* to get messed up on *detours* and
*wrong turns.* Even though there is adaptability, the system is really set up to keep a newcomer on a very
straightforward path. Again, no more excuses for me!
What I'm liking the best is how much *confusion* SiteBuildIt! eliminates. Believe me, with
FauxGrain,
my brain does a lot of spinning with details, bits of code, what seems to be a million little tasks. Trying to keep track of it all is the part of having a
website that frustrates me the most. By contrast, the
building-block approach that SiteBuildIt! uses really controls all that in a way that I can only describe
as a great big relief.
Now that I'm working with it myself, I'd especially recommend SiteBuildIt! to someone who has a special
interest, hobby, or subject that they want to build a
content website around ... but who *doesn't* want to mess very much with html, computer coding, search
engine optomization, and a long list of other technical and time-consuming kinds of web-site *stuff.* The
manual alone makes it a particularly good choice for a beginner.
Do check it out.
It's worth bookmarking in case you ever do decide you want to build a web
site. You won't find this
web-hosting package duplicated anywhere, and you'll
want to include it among the various options you might consider.
Copyright 2003 Faux Grain. All rights reserved.
Third party copyright material remains copyright of the
original copyright holders.
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