INK

By “all colors” what are you referring to?

Are you talking about mixing all the colors you can see? You can’t even come close to mixing all the colors you can see, with any set of ink bases. We can only print a limited number of colors.

Are you talking about mixing all the colors in the Pantone Matching System book? No, you can’t mix them all. That’s why they have 14 base colors plus transparent white, at least in my old PMS book. You need most if not all of these to mix all the colors.

If you use less bases, it will mainly restrict you from mixing the most pure and brilliant colors because the farther away your bases are from the color you are trying to mix, the less pure and brilliant (the ink makers say dirtier) the color will be.

The main problem I see with the colors you chose is that you have a red shade (reddish) blue, which will make it hard to mix pure greens from blue and yellow, because you need a green shade blue like cyan for that. The other problem is that you have a yellow shade red, which will make it hard to make some purples and violets. You need a blue shade red like magenta for that.

With your choices you can probably make greens, purples and violets, but they will be more dirty than if you had the right bases to make them out of. That’s why they have red shade and green shade blues, yellow shade and blue shade reds, etc. It’s just a question of how important color matching is, in your particular situation.

Ok…so all Basic Pantone…Van Sons sell 14 of them…ok. Transparent colours…can they be used without being mixed ? And what about the other colours that are already mixed…can they be used in a mix, or they are ready to be use.

Well, your questions leave a lot of openness to them so you’ll receive a variety of responses.

You won’t know until you USE the inks yourself. Anyone can tell you “YES” or “nooooooo” but until you actually use the ink to print, you won’t know for sure. This is one of those things where you’re trying to ask if a lightbulb will light your room.

Well, nobody but you knows how big your “room” is, what other light is coming in, or anything else about it, so we can’t really tell you if your “bulb” will light your “room”.

Does the analogy make sense?

I agree with helimited.

You seem to have decided on Van Son rubber base inks, which are a good choice as long as you don’t try to print on non-absorbent stock like highly coated paper, or plastic. They won’t dry well, if at all, on highly coated paper or plastic.

You can use any of these inks either straight out of the can or mixed with any of the others. You will find that the colors which are closest to the process colors in this series (yellow, rubine [magenta], and process blue), are highly transparent. The other base colors and the mixed colors will have varying degrees of transparency.

As helimited says, use the inks for yourself. Then you will find what works for you and your equipment, your printing conditions, etc.

Best of luck and have fun!

Geoff