Five acres, two little ones, one awesome husband, 12 ducks (give or take), and a bunch of fruit trees and garden beds. In her spare time, Nicole likes to knit, paint, draw, teach kids, make fairies & dragons, philosophize, and read fantasy. She doesn't HAVE spare time, but does like to fantasize about it!
I'm not sure about your island, but my area of the Pacific Northwest was also scraped by the giant ice sheet. Like you, I'm rather devoid of clay. Most of my soil is silty and gravelly.
I have a feeling that gritty/crystal-ly rocks like granite and quartz aren't terribly good for paints. If they were, people would have ground up amethysts and peridot for paint...and they didn't.
Calcium is a great source of white pigments--I wonder if I our big chunky white shells would turn into a nice white pigment?
Lamp black and charcoal should make a nice black.
Woad should make a nice lake blue, but it is very dark--almost like india ink. My daughter painted a watercolor with indigo watercolor, and it hasn't faded in two years, despite being hung on the wall.
Oxidized copper makes a light blue-green color, and I think copper was once found in the area (or maybe just brought in?). I'm pretty sure the area had copper tools for a while, but then switched to mostly bone and some stone tools. Lots of use of cedar!
I wonder what the local Salish Sea peoples used for paint. Did they tribes up in B.C. originally paint their totem poles, or did they simply carve them?
“totem poles were painted with a type of fish-egg tempera, consisting of a mineral pigment mixed with a mordant of fresh salmon eggs and saliva. The colors originally were red, black, and green or blue. The red was obtained from hematite, the black from graphite
and carbon, and green/blue from various copper ores common in the
region.”
Elanor Gardner wrote:My son does not love creating art digitally, so to encourage him, I say "All I want for my birthday/Christmas/Mother's Day is a picture that you drew digitally on your computer. I believe that someday he may be able to do a job he loves as long as we can make it marketable. This picture here was for my birthday:
It looks like he's been reading Wings of Fire! He did a great job depicting a Seawing--I recognized it immediately, before I ever saw the caption.
I found out about the series when my daughter's friend wanted a Rainwing named Glory for her birthday. I learned a ton about the characters so I could needle felt her one!
My kids' friends are all into Wings of Fire--they spent the summer reading the series and pretending to be various dragons. They even made up their own breeds of dragon from the series!
I don't make my living from my art, but I love honing my artistic skills. I especially love being able to make cards and gifts for people. I might not be making money from it, but I am saving money by making something heart-felt. Making gifts is also a great way to hone one's skills. I started needle felting fairies and dragons for friends and family, and now I sell them every so often. I also might get the opportunity to teach a needle-felting class next year.
Art opens many avenues for income. My brother has a digital arts degree, and is the tech/media guy for a private school--it's not what he was envisioning when he went for his degree, but his skills and training are still being put to use. My cousin has an art degree, and ended up as a relatively famous tattoo artist in his area, and he also does graphics for board games. I'm pretty sure he didn't get an art degree with the intention of being a tattoo artist! I think it's important to hold our goals a little loosely, and realize that there's lots of ways our skills can be useful, even if they don't become our primary source of income.
A lot of the skills in digital art can also be applied to other art, such as webpage design and physical art. A good artistic sense is super useful in making an eye catching and cohesive webpage. Color theory, design, and composition apply to all sorts of media. Even if digital art ends up becoming more and more dominated out by A.I. art, the skills learned in making it are not useless.
I guess all this is to say, is that your son is doing great by following his passion and his interests, and that those skills can be useful in all SORTS of fields and activities!
Madison Woods wrote:
In my tests, if the paint rubs into the surrounding paper of the swatch once it's dry, I needed more gum. If the paint doesn't dry without being tacky, I needed less honey. Unfortunately, until the binder is made, you can't test it as a paint binder. I usually make several bottles of it when I do, so if the swatch test fails, I dump it all back into a pot and adjust the ratios and try again. Once it's good, I 'can' the bottles just as I would if I were making jelly in a water bath and they last on the shelf for a very long time. Once I open a bottle, I'll keep it in the refrigerator, but they last a long time on the shelf after opened, too.
I made a gum arabic+honey binder about week and a half ago. I mixed up a bunch of trays of paint (using store bought pigments) for a class I'm teaching on 18 century watercolor. I made a little over a cup of gum arabic solution, and had a lot left over. I didn't think to refrigerate it, because in the past I just stored gum arabic+water in a jar, and it was fine.
I realized I probably need more paint for my class, so I went to mix up some more using my gum arabic....and the jar "popped" when I opened it, and things smelled vinegary. Will the paint still work, or are the humectant properties of the honey destroyed by fermentation?
I thought that the easiest way to test how bad the bleeding is, would be to use my kids as test subjects. If they don't get bleeding that makes them mad, then other kids probably will be fine, too.
I called them over and said I needed them to paint on the cloth. My son took the task literally: He just applied some green and red paint to his cloth and asked if he was done. No sadness about how the paint was working, so that's good!
My daughter went for a more fancy design, but thought it looked really pretty, even when it bled. No sadness there, either!
I think this means I don't need to use any sizing. Score!
The other issue is, how will the sizing affect the flight of the kite. I'm thinking that it would likely make the kite more wind resistant, which is good. But, it will also make it heavier. But by how much?
Is gum arabic used as a sizing? Do I want to use that much gum arabic on yards of fabric?
Yes, I have access to the cloth--I've been collecting cotton sheets from the thrift store over the past few months. I'll be cutting out all the kites here at home, because there's only 50 minutes in each class. So, I could easily dip them before the kids paint them.
Can I iron the gelatin-sized cloth after I dip it? Or, will the heat of the iron activate/destroy the gelatin in weird ways?
Gelatin might be just the trick! It'll be a pain to apply to all the kites (the kites are 30 inches across and 36 inches tall, in a diamond shape). Thankfully a little over half the class chose to make their kites out of paper, rather than cloth, so that should cut down on the amount of prep time. I bought a giant bag of gelatin a while back when I had to make jello for a potlucks once a month--so I should hopefully have enough to size 10 kites.
Thank you! I fear that I use my teaching as a way to justify buying fun supplies and trying new skills. It's for the children!
I wanted to try out the watercolors on the kite material. The kids get to chose between butcher paper and cotton fabric (thrift store sheets!) for their kites. I'm not too worried about the water color paint on the butcher paper, especially if the kids don't go heavy on the water. This water color seems a lot thicker than the cheep Crayola watercolor sets I grew up with, so I don't think the kids will be a prone to using tons of water.
I'm using the watercolors I mixed last week. I notice that the paint has cracked a LOT on many of the colors. I'm wondering if this is because I added water first, and then added the gum arabic solution. This resulted in there being less gum arabic/honey to the pigment, so it's more chalky? I might add more pigment and gum arabic to this set and see if that fixes things.
I also noticed that the paint bleeds a lot! I don't usually watercolor, and I've never watercolored on Canvas. I'm wondering if the kids are going to get mad/frustrated by the bleeding paint? Is there a "sizing" (is that the right word?) that I can add to the fabric so it doesn't bleed so much?
Testing out the paint on a left over scrap of cotton sheet fabric. The watercolor bleeds a lot!
Of course, to do this, I need a lot of natural watercolor sets so all the kids can easily access the paint. Time to make a bunch of watercolor trays!
Making the gum arabic solution
To make water colors, your want: pigment, gum arabic, and honey. The gum arabic makes the pigment stick to the paper, and also thickens it. The honey helps it flow well on the paper. I got my instructions for making water colors from Natural Earth Pigments.
I should have written down my exact measurements, but I'm pretty sure they were:
1 cup boiled well water (the recipe calls for distilled water, but my well water seems to do well enough)
1/2 cup gum arabic
2 tbsp honey
Gum Arabic powder, and my gum arabic solution
Adding the gum arabic solution to the pigment
Natural Earth Pigments says to add water to the pigment first, and then add the gum arabic solution.
The amount of pigment to use will vary depending upon the color. Start with a ratio of 1 part Gum/Honey to 1 part pigment paste and adjust as necessary. Mix all the ingredients and work them on a glass plate using a paint spatula. Your goal is to obtain a paste with a thick, creamy consistency. Some pigments will incorporate easier than others. Smoothest mixtures of watercolors can be obtained by mulling your final paint with a glass and muller such as our [Muller Paint Making Set] Test your final watercolors on appropriate paper by wetting them with the brush and painting a swatch down the paper. You should not see any micro-bursting of pigment particles, or clumps of unincorporated pigment.
Last week, when I made my first sets of pigments, I tried adding water first, and then the gum arabic solution. But, I was disappointed with the results. Some of the pigments, like the San Fransico Red did not like mixing with water. The pigments would either float on the top of the water, or the water would float on the pigment, but they wouldn't mix. The pigments kept spilling into other paint sections, and it was a true paint! Since honey acts as a surfactant, though, things finally started mixing when I added the gum arabic solution.
I also didn't like how much the paint ended up evaporating! I filled these little containers to the brim with paint, and they evaporated into just 1/3rd full!
Sorry for blurry picture...
This time around, I just added the pigment to the container, and then put the gum arabic solution on top, and gave it time to saturate. Then I mixed them with a paint brush. This resulted in much less mess!
Adding scoops of pigment to my new, improvised paint tray
Gum arabic solution poured over the pigment. Not yet mixed.
Mixing the pigment and gum arabic solution together with a paint brush
A full tray of watercolor paints!
The above was an improvised paint tray. My husband suggested using the Turkish Delight box, but the plastic is too fragile and prone to cracking. However, my kids love running around the pews after church and hunting down all the communion cups. I realized those would be perfect inside the Turkish Delight sections! The cups by themselves would be prone to tipping over, but the Turkish Delight box holds them in place nicely. Another added benefit is that I can take the cup out to fill with pigment and gum arabic, and I don't have to worry about accidently spilling pigment into another cup of paint.
I also bought these cute little paint trays. I want to give one to my friend for her birthday. Since it had dried out to such a small amount of paint, I added more pigment and gum arabic to each tray section. It worked much better adding just the pigment and then the gum arabic without messing with the extra water. I didn't have any pigment spill into a different color this time. Huzzah!
Pigments added to tiny trays, and then covered with gum arabic solution. Not yet mixed
Making my own pigments!
I found out that lake pigments are just dyebaths that evaporated! Crimson lake = cochineal dye. Madder Lake = madder dye. Light red lake was usually a mix of madder, cochineal &/or logwood.
Previously, I'd dyed a bunch of wool with madder. I ended up with a bunch of dye exhaust. I let it evaporate on top of my woodstove to make madder lake! I did the same thing with my cochineal dye vat, too.
Madder dye baths
Cochineal dye bath
I also had some powdered indigo and logwood from Aurora Silk, and used that to make indigo lake (which i think is "India Ink"?) and logwood lake.
Testing my lake paints. The madder turned brown from aging, I think. The cochineal and indigo are vibrant!
Homemade pigments in the sunlight
For extra fun, I still have my jar of copper from staining my son's chessboard blue 5 years ago, and some copper mordant. I tried adding that to gum arabic to make a bice-type pigment. It came out VERY light--I don't think it likes to dissolve in the cold gum arabic solution, but I don't really have a way to heat it up without melting the little cup.
I really wanted to see if the "Turquoise Green" pigment is the same as "Bice" (I'm trying to make sure the kids can paint with all the colors in 1770's watercolor paint set). I'm happy to see that the Turquoise Green is very similar in hue to the copper paint I made!
Five acres, two little ones, one awesome husband, 12 ducks (give or take), and a bunch of fruit trees and garden beds. In her spare time, Nicole likes to knit, paint, draw, teach kids, make fairies & dragons, philosophize, and read fantasy. She doesn't HAVE spare time, but does like to fantasize about it! 
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