WOYWW - Paints and paintings

Well.... January disappeared in a cloud of smoke.  All good now as the fires are out after 

torrential downpours and floods.  Australia is definitely the land of extremes.

Since the last post a dragonfly painting completed and 

moving on to a seascape of one of the local beaches.  

In between painting started making my own watercolour paint.  

Not content with making several paints with the pigments I bought.  I headed off to the beach and foraged for ochre rocks.  Next few photos show the long and complicated process.  But as a crafter/artist I love the process of "making".  I am sure a few woyww's will understand.  DH thinks I have gone mad (nothing new).

First step - find ochre like rocks. Crush and make a muddy slurry.

Once the slurry is a dry powder mull with a binder medium (yes, I made my own binder and that took 2 days!!)

End result 3 pans of Australian red ochre.  Hard to tell the difference between these and some very expensive watercolours in my collection.   Ochres have been around for 1000's of years and are lightfast, so there should be no problem once I use them in my paintings.  

Learnt so much from the process and have found a bit of a passion for making my own paints.

Last photo a display of the cards I painted using the store bought pigments.  Which turned out quite bright.  Initially worried about how useful they would be in my paintings.  But, you can do so much by mixing colours and toning down the value using water.  

Sorry about the long post but I have been a busy woyww.

Have a great crafty week.