Madison Woods

In my kitchen, I use cotton bar 'mop' towels in lieu of paper towels for most things. I have been known to ruin a few by redirecting them to my art room. But they do a good job, and I've started taking the towels that are getting raggedy and adding them to my stash in the art room. But my favorite thing to use is the supposedly disposable blue oil rag towels on a roll in that I find in the auto department at stores. They're more of a cloth than a paper towel, don't give up lint, and are very absorbent and can be washed several times. I rarely use solvents in my oil practice, so none of my towels last all that long because it's hard to get the paints out of them without the chemicals, but if I wash them with old cooking oil first, then with dawn dish soap, they last a bit longer.

You might have created a new, improved fermented paint, lol. My only concern is longevity of the paper or foundation because of the acidity. It could also alter the color some because of oxidation. If you were adding a little chalk to your pigment it might fix that, but then they’d be more like gouache….not necessarily a bad thing, but will cause more opacity.

Interesting experiment!

r ranson wrote:Love it!  Dragons!

One of the things I love most about handmade watercolours is the personality and participation they have.  Mass manufactured paints are lovely, but bland in that each paint falls into such a narrow range of behaviour. Handmade paints have opinions!


Harder to pick up the pigment, like from the dry watercolour cake/pan?  More sugar/honey will help, but too much will stop it drying into a pan.

From what I've read of people making their own paints, eventually they start to adjust the ratios of the binder to match the pigment.  But it doesn't seem like everyone does this so I don't know how much difference it makes.

Sometimes I put a drop of honey in the water I am painting with.  I don't know if it helps, but it feels like it does and it feels easier to wet the next day.

Yes, I have found that some pigments are so hard to wet sometimes that I can't use the same binder ratios to make the paint from them because they'd have too much honey for the others. When I find them hard to wet, it's usually because they needed more honey, like you say. Once I find a pigment like that, I tend to not use it for watercolors if I have to make a separate batch of binder for it. It also is an issue with oil paints - some pigments soak up the oil much more than others and I have to use a lot more oil:pigment for those. But at least it's not as troublesome as making a separate bottle of watercolor binder.

However, maybe it's not necessary to make a whole separate bottle of the watercolor binder. Maybe just mixing up some on the side with a touch more honey would do the trick. That seems like the simplest way to do it, and I have no idea why I never though to do it that way, lol. And I never thought of putting honey in the wetting water, and that seems the easiest way of all!

Nicole Alderman wrote:
I'm honestly not that well-acquainted with watercolors, so I'm not really sure how to gauge how well they worked. ...
... color will look deep, but ends up being super light and not applying easily. It makes painting tricky, but I don't think that has anything to do with the gum arabic solution.

But, I'm also just not that accustomed to watercolors, so I really don't know what I'm looking for in good watercolors. My experience with watercolors is the Crayola paint trays from when I was a kid, and the watercolor paints I made.

I attached both my "color test" dragons, and then the final dragon painting. (I didn't want to paint my sketch until I was sure the paints looked good together, and that I had relatively good control of the paint!)

I love the dragons! And yes, some pigments are more saturated than others, and especially if they're from natural sources. Most of the synthetic ones are pretty saturated. The green looks the same as the green I use, it' just isn't a very saturated color, but layering does help. But you did a wonderful job getting the varying densities, I'd say.

Nicole Alderman wrote:

Madison Woods wrote:
Will the paint still work, or are the humectant properties of the honey destroyed by fermentation?

Hi Nicole! I have used my binder when it was smelling a bit off, but it hadn't gone quite vinegar yet. It worked then. I'm not sure if it will work well or not at that point, but it's worth an experiment to see if it will. But maybe make some new to try alongside to compare. With oil paints, I know the walnut oil can go rancid and smell horrific. But the smell will dissipate and it doesn't affect the paint because it was rancid. No idea how fermenting will affect the watercolor binder, though. If you try it, please let us know how it went.

Chelsea, those are super neat!

Hi, I've been a member of the forum for a long while. Usually I'm posting in the artist forums. I make paints from the pigments in the rocks here. I've recently become a licensed realtor and I'd love to help you find a property suitable for a sustainable, permaculture life in northwest-northcentral Arkansas. My husband and I live six miles from pavement in the Ozark mountains and we love the rural lifestyle. It's definitely not for everyone, but very rewarding for those who love living in close proximity with nature. While I don't practice a formal sort of permaculture, I have learned a lot about rural life, organic gardening in terraces on this rocky ground, and what kinds of elements are wonderful to find in a land intended to provide a sustainable lifestyle here. My online name is Madison Woods, but with real estate, I have to use my real name, Roxann Riedel. So I put on different hats for different tasks, lol. If you'd like to find property in Madison, Newton, Boone, Carrol counties let me know. Madison and Newton have more forested unimproved land and improved properties with abundant forests, while Boone and Carrol have some of that too but it's easier to find more small-town, large and small-farm, pasture lands there. While it might seem odd to call this a 'plus', there are a lot of places out here that still don't have cell phone coverage. That was actually a criteria when I was searching for our land here now. We do have Starlink for internet, but no cell signal for miles. I think it's a good indicator for population density of an area.

Here's my virtual card for art and real estate:


Madison or Roxann, or MadRox :)
madison@wildozark.com

The latest painting to get off of my easel.

Just finished the first one for 2024. The frame is one I picked up from our local recycle center:

If you like to see progression, here's my page for this painting: Creekside with Sycamores

I've been scrolling through and enjoying all of the posts made to this thread since I last visited a while back. I love seeing everyone's artwork. 2023 was a year of experimenting with oil paints that I made from our rocks and a couple of the more lightfast plants. Here's a collage of it all, though in the preview it doesn't look like my image is going to show up. If you'd like to see individual images please visit  https://www.wildozark.com/unique-art-by-madison-woods/, my portfolio page at my website. Merry Christmas, End of Year, Start to the Coldest (or warmest if you're south of the equator) Months to everyone!
by Madison Woods, on Flickr