Mixing Ziller Inks

One day I needed to mix the Ziller Inks to match a shade of green.    

I didn't want to mix a large amount and I wasn't sure which colors I needed to mix to match the green.

I looked around my office and couldn't find any containers small enough.

As I sat at my desk and tried to come up with a solution to my problem, I saw a pile of paperclips.

In a short time I mixed many shades of green. I found that I could put one paper clip in each color and use them to drop a small amount of ink on the nib. I used one paper clip for mixing the color on the nib and one to add water to the color on the nib to thin the color or make the ink letter better.

 

Here are several of my sheets that I created one day.

 

Then I tried various shades of blue mixing Midnight Blue with combinations using North Wind White, Wild Viola Violet, Sweet Grass Green and Cardinal Red.

 

I wrote in pencil the combinations so I would remember how to do it when I needed that color again.

 

I lettered in copperplate but this will work also for spencerian and broad pen lettering.

Here are various shades of violet using combinations of Wild Viola Violet, North Wind White, Cardinal Red and Midnight Blue.

 

Not all combinations used Wild Viola Violet but all combinations used North Wind White.

Here are various colors using a combination of Sunflower Yellow, Cardinal Red, Buffalo Brown, and North Wind White.

 

These pieces are not final pieces but just playing around quickly with the colors.

 

I copied short sayings and tried to created as many colors as I could on a sheet of paper.

 

This is a good way to mix North Wind White and Sunflower Yellow with other colors and transfer other colors into these colors.

 

Also the clean up is easy.

You can dip your nib into the various colors if you have small containers.

 

In this one I dipped the nib into various colors. It is harder to see the slight changes of color.

 

Oncet you know how to mix the color in very small quantities on your pen nib, then you can mix a larger batch in  a jar using the same proportions.

This example is using a mixture of  North Wind White and Soot Black with water, Sunflower Yellow, Midnight Blue or Cardinal Red to produce shades of grey.

 

By mixing these colors, you have a sample to show a client some of the colors you can use for their job.

I used green and yellow for the top line

   blue and red for the middle line

blue red and orange for the bottom line

these greens are made from mixtures of Sweet Grass Green, Sunflower Yellow, Northwind White and Buffalo Brown

these reds are made from mixtures of Prairie Fire Orange, Buffalo Brown, North Wind White and Midnight Blue

these reds are made from mixtures of Cardinal Red, North Wind White, Midnight Blue, and Wild Viola Violet