In 1968, when I walked out of my high school with the diploma in hand I got a job at a paint store. I started out just mixing paint orders. I had a customer about matching a paint....something generally left for aanother guy to do but he was gone for a couple days and I said I'd see what I could do. The boss was pretty much of the attitude "have at big guy" so I did and I did a darned good job of it. After a while, matching paints became a specialty of mine. Did it for about 4 years.
When the wife needs fabric for quilting projects, I get to go to the store to help match colors with other colors and prints against other prints. Creating paint color for my jig sales website has been rewarding in many ways and now some of the color work has brushed off into the plastics stuff. Matching a plastic color to water color is another area where this pays off big time, but then a lot of that is knowing my prey.
Color isn't something that everyone has a knack at. Microspoons has a huge palate in his mind and does on super outstanding job of coming up with mind-twisting colors. Right now I am just having a riot with colors and hi lites. I'm almost ready to start toying with the pearl colors offered here at CCM. I've mentioned it before but I take terribly small baby steps when I am building a color and that most likely is a throw-back to habits formed year ago. And I can't just throw anything away. I have some clear eye dip that yellowed some after heating a million times. I split it and added a bit of transparent red to one part and transparent blue to another. Dab of appropriate hi lits and some glitter and a guy can mask a world of yellowed stuff enough to find a use for down the road a ways. I'm sure I have a place for them and they'll likely end up in a pic here. The recipe might be a hard copy though, lol.