Colour Dilution of Powders

Sometimes you do not have a tone or shade of a colour you need for your project.  Other times you want to have a gradation of shade across a piece.  There is the obvious solution of mixing a colour with clear to produce lighter shades.  But there is a difficulty when mixing clear with powders to fuse. The result is often a pointillist effect with points of light coming through the colour. There are several approaches to this difficulty.

One way is to use a powder made from a tint of the colour.  But sometimes there is not a tint made. Sometimes you do not have that tint in stock. So, you must look to other solutions.

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An alternative is to use clear powder to mix with the intense colour you want to dilute.  You will need to test varying proportions of clear to colour to get the tone you need.  You may be surprised at the amount of clear needed.  And there still is the slight possibility of points of light coming through the clear.

Another possibility is to use one of the less dense white powders to mix with the colour.  White powders such as the Bullseye 000243, translucent white, or the 000113, dense white are possible.  The very dense or lacy whites are not as suitable. One is too opaque, the other is uneven in colour. Again, testing will be required, and you may be surprised at how little is required to alter the tone.

One other way I have used is to mix fine frit with the powder.  This has less control than the other methods but can provide significant dilution of the intense colours.  If you want to see if this is suitable, you can follow this process. 

Add a few drops of water to the clear frit in a small container. Close it and shake to get all the frit coated with a film of water. If after shaking the frit is not “clumping” you can add a little more. Too much water will create a slurry which is not suitable.  So, add only a small amount of water at a time until the frit is like damp sand on the beach. Any excess water must be poured off. 

Add powder to the damp frit, and shake well again to coat the frit with powder. If the frit does not seem to be fully coated, add a little more powder.  The film of water on the frit allows the powder to adhere temporarily to the frit.  

This mixture can then be applied to the surface and smoothed with a pallet knife. This will not guarantee there are no clear pinpoints, but it will reduce them to a minimum. You will not have the subtle differences in tone that sifting powder can give you, but it is a cost-effective way of diluting intense powder colours that can have advantages over mixing powders.

Of course, the various methods of diluting colour described here can be used to combine powders to produce new colours.