The colors in my pigments are because of various combinations of iron oxide, for the most part. This gives me the browns, the yellows, oranges, and the reds. I have an earthy palette!
Hematite
The red colors are from …
Category: Making Pigments
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A Yellow Paint Experiment | Lake pigment from thyme
Back when I made my very first set of paints, I had a really nice yellow. I’d made several yellows from various plants and did lightfast tests on them. All failed except for the one, gorgeous yellow. Not only did …
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A Stable Blue from Asiatic Dayflower (Commelina communis)
One day I smashed a flower petal from the Asiatic dayflower between my thumb and forefinger. It’s a small plant that grows sparsely in the shady, moist areas along the driveway. While it’s not native to the Ozarks, it is …
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The Orange in Osage Root Bark
The color in the Osage root bark is quite vivid and I’m trying to capture that pigment.
My first attempt wasn’t very successful. I used water to try and extract the orange. I simmered it on low heat, then strained …
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Bone Black
I made bone black, from a cow vertebra that I charred inside a small tin inside the wood stove. Previously I’d used charred wood from hickory and oak. It has been a difficult paint to re-wet and it never reached …
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Paint from Red Sandstone
Today I made several different shades of paint from red sandstone.
When I make a paint from a pigment-rich stone, like this one, rather than waste what is left on the plate after mulling and scraping up the paint, I’ll …
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What are Paleo Paints?
The Paleo Paints
My husband once said my handmade paints reminded him of how the cave men made their paints for the cave drawings. And he was right! And so we called them Paleo Paints.
I make them by crushing …
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Appreciating the Brown Colors
I think the color brown is vastly underappreciated. Think about it. It’s the earthiest of our earthy colors. The base of all the palettes of nature. Something that exists in such abundance is also called ‘ubiquitous’. By its very virtue …
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Shades of Shale
Black shale is a common rock in our creeks and streams. The rocks are brittle and easy to crumble, and make a dark gray rub. A great candidate for making some paint.
And it makes a really buttery textured paint. …
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Pottery Shard
A few weeks ago during my morning walk, I found an old pottery shard. So I put it in my pocket and finished my walk. It looked like it might make a nice paint, but I debated over whether or …
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Wild Waterfall Shale
Making paint from waterfall slate
Slate isn’t the easiest rock to grind up. The first time I made paint, I gathered a few rocks from here and there to see what I would get. This rock lives near the waterfall …
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Pink Tequila
Pink Tequila comes from a pink sandstone, but the resulting paint or pigment color isn’t pink at all. Or at least, not very much. It’s closer to orange, but there is a slight pink tinge to the orange.
This one, …
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Cromwell’s Sunrise
Cromwell’s Sunrise is a warm golden yellow Wild Ozark Paleo Paint made from a stone of northwest Arkansas. This color began with a rock gifted to me by another northwest Arkansas artist. He saw it while out hiking and thought …
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Black. The Messiest Color Start to Finish.
Sometimes I’m overzealous with the black. More honestly put, I am almost always too generous with the black. I put more on than I need and so end up taking a lot of it right back off.
Why I love
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Red leaves of black gum (Nyssa sylvatica)
Black gum leaves begin turning deep red near the end of summer, sometimes long before any other leaves are starting to think of autumn.
This color is made from the late summer red leaves of black gum (also called black …