Color Plates-Understanding Expansion of Your Enamels
Color plates are very important. And yet so many choose not to do them. I know it takes a lot of time!
Yes, you can get recommendations of colors from other artist, but in the long, the practice of making color plates can not only save you time and frustration but also end with the beautiful jewel you had visioned.
It is the first step in my experience of successful enameling, no mater what technique you choose is making a color plate to test how the colors work together can make you more successful in this medium.
This is a color plate, you can see the expansion of each enamel. One is a low fusing and most on this plate are medium fusing. But if you look at #4 it is a very high fusing enamel.
Understanding the expansion of enamels.
There is a lot of information on this plate, see what you can find. No matter if you are working in the technique of Cloisonne, Plique a Jour, Champleve, or sifting on colors of enamel, you should know the properties of the products you are working with.
This is my pink color plate. Some artist have just a few colors and mix two, to get a color shade in between them. I prefer to have separate colors. If I mix colors together it might come out with a speckled effect, or it might crack. As you see if you even put #4 next to #7 it will crack. They have different expansion rates.
I have a choice to set them next to each other to work in a color family and be able to go from light to dark, as in the large fish.
Creating even shading in enamels.
Notice the 4th enamel dot did not flow at the same temperature and time as the rest of the enamel dots. This means the expansion rate is different in the two enamels. The one that is grainy has a higher expansion rate, than the ones that are smooth.
These two images show problem with the soft enamel being used on the bottom and the harder enamel on top. When heated the soft enamel bubbles up and around the hard enamel.
Color Plates-Understanding Expansion of Your Enamels
