A way to get patterns in wood putty?

[Stephen Tashiro]

Wood putty would be a more interesting material if there was some pattern in it. That would be better than having the place that is filled be a homogeneous color. I've tried coloring blobs of the water based putties with different colors of acrylic paints and imperfectly mixing them. However, the action of filling holes in wood mixes the putty so much that it looks like it's all the same color. Is there a good way to get interesting patterns of color in putty?

[Sam Babbage]

You can do this by mixing oxide colourings (sold here as concrete colouring additives) with an epoxy putty like Quickwood. For example, mix thoroughly with yellow, then a light mix with a touch of brown. It doesn't really work with water based putty, and quite frankly doesn't look that much better than a well colour matched putty.

[Josiah Bartlett]

If you really want a wood grained hole filler, learn to cut and use a dutchman.