From Dirt to Paint

Here you see my makeshift setup.

I have a pantyhose as sieve for the Pigment, a Glass cuttingboard and a Weizenglass as muller ( any glass with flat bottom will do!)

And a mortar.

I grind my pigment, then make it wet and grind more.

Then I put my pigment in a pickles jar with water and stir it > let sit for a minute and then pour off the water into another jar.

Careful to leave the heavy stuff in the first jar.

The finer parts that are longer suspended in the water are the Pigments I want. The heavy stuff is sand.

This process is called levigation

You can repeat that step to get even finer Pigments or get different hues out of what you have ( allways a surprise)

I let this Pigmente water mixture sit until the water is clear, then pour it off carefully .

I place the wet pigment on clay plates to dry (doesn't work with too fine Pigment, next time I try a coffee filter for that)

If my dry Pigment has clumps I grind it again.

Protect your eyes, mouth and Hands when you make Pigment! 💖

And all this for yummy paint! 😁

Thats very cool :D

Really interesting. When you use this method, how long do your paints take to cure? They look beautiful! 'Becky

Thank You Becky and cheryl ! 💖

I guess they cure like ochres would,

Every one of them acted a bit different. Depending on the amount of Binder they needed it took a week or more to dry..

But I filled those Bottlecaps to the Brim, that's an almost insane amount of watercolor 😁😂 might have gone quicker if I worked in layers.

Saw that I never posted the swatches 🙈

Wow! That is so cool! I’d love to see a video series of your process.

Thank You!

At the moment I don't really have time to work with my own Pigments.

But you could check out @jeremyfrancisart on YouTube or Instagram.

He has a video about working with ochre and he makes all kinds of other Pigments 😍

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LKGsQxv72AA

I hope the Link works🙂