Finally got some pigment pastes and tried them out! I'll talk more about them in my next video going over resin colorants, but first impressions are good :D
Heads up! Now Bookface has finished, new handmade earth pigments paints and sets are up in my store! I'm super proud of them, especially the green earths set 💚🪨🖌️
My first colour is Cinnamon! It is a red ochre pigment, from the Guédelon medieval castle site. A wonderful orange-red earth tone, great for animal fur, bricks, or those fall forests.
It is also the name for a eumelanin-based coat colour in cats, the most recessive of the three variations of the black-coat gene.
As you can see, I'm still figuring out what I want to call the business, so I'll likely re-upload Cinnamon when I'm sure about what to title it!
More mulling left to do, but the color off my pokeberry lake is spectacular! I am so glad because I really didn't want to go back in the brambles to get to my local patch. I love these berries, I used to play with them when I was younger growing up in Atlanta. I would make ink from them and mix it with my mud paint I made from the red clay. I've always been fascinated by colors found in nature, and I get excited when I find one as vibrant as the phthalos and quins.
i do like those videos where they make watercolors out of makeup but i rlly hope no one actually tries to use them for serious peices bc i appriciate the art form of paint making and i love the idea of recycling pigments that are expired but. there is a bit of an archival concern there considering makeup pigments aren’t designed for exposure to light beyond a few hours and fillers and binders used in makeup can contain a lot of oils and other additions that are gr8 for your skin but not so much for paper. and also i shouldnt have to say this but please avoid using used makeup for paintmaking its just not. very sanitary lol. i know its going on paper but that doesnt mean theres not a bit of a cross contamiation concern with skin cells and oil since that can degrade paper.
I'm proud of this handmade watercolor palette. I experimented with a lot a pigments from various sources to create the strongest natural earth colors I could. They're very satisfying to paint with.
I usually use watercolors in mixed media and in my illustrations, but I wanted to try this palette out all by itself. Since these are natural earth pigments, it's basically a palette of browns, (and one gray). It makes painting a subject and interesting challenge with no blues or greens.
Flowers, and Fruits, and Tree Bark, oh my! Amanda and Peng Fan of Boulder Colors create their paints from all sorts of natural items – Red cabbage, Peach pits, Moss, and more. If it’s organic, locally sourced in Boulder, Colorado, and can give up some color, it’s likely been used.
What started as a homeschool project turned into a business. Not satisfied with just watercolors, Boulder Colors…
I'm getting better, so I'm also getting back on my bullshit 😂 Making the whole screen cobalt green 💚
This pigment is from Jackson's Art, because they're the only supplier who gave me a decent reply to my questions about cobalt-containing pigments & avoiding products of modern slavery/child labour. And I know it's an almost impossible question tbh; only a very small proportion of the world's cobalt goes into pigments (way more is used in tech prod.) These pigments are also highly processed and thus divorced from ore coming out of the ground. But we should still ask our suppliers if they at least comply with REACH and EU legislation aimed at remediation of forced labour & human rights violations.
Anyway smol note of appreciation for Jackson's UK staff who have to deal with my regular vexing questions about pigment regional origins and ethics. They always answer, even if it takes a while for them to track down where something came from (and even when I lose track of where TF things are... 😬) and I value that.