Thursday, July 23, 2009

painting with plant & earth pigments

gorgeous indigo paints. the lighter circles were tinted with titanium dioxide
adding yellow ochre to the dragon's blood
madder
our materials
the muller- "if it's not mulled, it's not paint"

Last night was part 2 of a 3 part course i hosted at the uc botanical garden at berkeley. judi pettite, a local painter who uses only natural pigments, was our teacher. we experimented with reds, oranges blues and greens using plants such as : madder, dragon's blood (a resin from a number of trees), goldenrod, cosmos, woad, indido. we also used the precious lapis lazuli and ochre- a natural earth pigment. mixing these pigments with gum arabic and grinding them with a muller we made paints. it was such a satisfying and beautiful process.

1 comment:

cleo said...

sounds lovely.
did you process the pigments from the plants yourselves or did they come powdered?