Updating Sets

I've been thinking of updating the sets that I offer.  I haven't changed the single color sets since I started- and I made about 200 colors. Now that the line is 350 colors maybe it is time. This is one option that I have been considering for the blues. My original set was a range of 5 of 5 different blues. Now I am thinking of changing that somewhat, bringing in a couple of new colors. One would be the #514 which is a very dark navy blue, almost black. Another would be my #4 a very cool bluish white. The numbers for the set above are: 514, 540, 340, 641, 510 / 520, 341, 80, 430, 140 / 521, 343, 81, 431, 221 / 522, 344, 82, 433, 142 / 4, 524, 84, 434, 144 .

Here is a picture of my current set. The numbers in this set are: 80-84 / 430-434 / 340-344 / 540-544/ 520-524 . Any thoughts about this? Some other suggestions?

 

Blacks

I was talking to a customer discussing a black pastels that he had been using. As he was describing the color it occured to me a possible way of making a black pastel using only black ingredients. Sure enough this worked for me, even better than I had anticipated. The resulting pastel had a slightly course feel and is sort of like drawing with a hole it is so dark. I added it to the end of the group of warm greys. The picture above shows the warm black that I make (#450) and this new black (#461).

The black and greys that I make (#450-460) have a little burnt umber mixed with the black to give a warm tone.

Color Change

Recently I've had three pigments that I use become unavailable. This has led to a couple changes to the color groups that I make. The biggest change is to the group 280-284. Not being able to get the main pigment for this group led me to rethink what I wanted to do with these colors. I liked the aspect of the color getting yellower as it lightened instead of getting paler. First of all I wanted to make the darker color in the group darker and richer. The bigger change came however in the lightest color.  I couldn't get a good duplication with other pigments that I had available and I was looking for a good yellow green to use in my tropical set. I finally setteled on the color pictured and then worked with the darkest and lightest colors to make the middle ones.

 There were a couple of other colors that also used this pigment but in both cases I've just mixed other pigments to replace the older color. The new colors came very close to the old ones the only difference being that the new colors are not as gritty as the old pigment was. Which, all in all, I can live with that.