A day of colour

I come over all funny when I see this picture. This is my gravure cylinder at the factory, beautifully engraved and ready to print my wallpaper. Oh my...I find it exquisite.

And these are the shoes of James who was one of my colourists for the day. He and Shane mixed up colours to order for us all day long...

A blob here, a blob there...well that's what it looked like but it was much more technical and super organised than that!

Notes were taken every step along the way.

With each colour change the cylinders had to be cleaned down and hoisted on and off the machines.

The big ones like mine weigh around 100 kg!

They worked so hard for us mixing and printing and carrying the samples down the corridor to our sampling room to await their next instruction. 

We pinned everything up to have a look at and with the help of the Anstey staff we made decisions about where to go next every step of the way. 

'Brighter, warmer, a step up, a step down, cleaner, dirty it up a bit, less minty, more sage, up ten percent, down twenty'...by the middle of the day we were learning the lingo...

You can't see it but this one has 'mica' in it which is like a metallic powder that creates a gentle sheen. It's very pretty indeed.

By the end of the day we had created over thirty colourways.

 I only really went to find my 'kraft paper' colour and I came away with A LOT of decisions to make!

It was an amazing day. I learned that colour is an elusive thing. It doesn't stay still and you can't pin it down. When you think you have it the next time you turn around it seems to be not quite what you thought it was. And then there's the fact that what you see one way, someone else sees another. Hmmmm tricky.

All I know now is that I want to take lots of colours to print :)

Are you with me?