Your Weekly Voilà: The Making of Color Has a Long History 💕🎨🇫🇷

"One must see nature as no one has seen it before."

- Paul Cezanne

The making of color has a long history. Derived from rocks and ground into a powder, pigments have been used to stain the skin and preserve a story since the beginning of humankind. The earliest found art supplies are abalone shells full of ground ochre and charcoal in the Blombos Cave in South Africa, dating back some 100,000 years.

40,000 years ago, hunters and herders in Europe, Australia, and Indonesia recorded their lives on cave walls and expanded their paint palette to include sap, berries, minerals, and dried plants and roots. Iron oxide was valued for its durability and painters traveled many miles to gather the material. Prehistoric mining trails have recently been uncovered around the famous Lascaux Cave in France. Early painters mixed their pigments using water, saliva, urine, or animal fats. They applied the color with their brushes, fingers, or by blowing through hollow bones that served as a straw and splattered the pigment.

Egyptians continued the modern advancements, mixing paints with binding agents such as egg, resin, or beeswax so the paint would adhere to plaster. Their tombs were made of limestone, covered in plaster, and painted using charcoal, ochres, azurite, and malachite. The Minoans developed the technique for frescoes by painting onto wet lime plaster, increasing the durability of the artwork. The Greeks and Romans expanded on these techniques to create paint with plant oils that produced astonishing color and depth. Throughout the medieval culture and the Renaissance, ochre was a medium used in drawings, paintings, and fabrics. The pigment was made into crayons and favored by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo for their sepia drawings. Vermeer and Rembrandt used ground ochre to add an underlying warmth and glow to their paintings.

Just 1/2 hour from my home are the spectacular cave paintings of Pech Merle, painted more than 29,000 years ago. Discovered in 1922 by three teenagers from the village of Cabrerets, the caves feature more than 800 prehistoric drawings. It is one of the last prehistoric caves that permit visitors. Be sure to purchase your tickets online as demand is high.

Armed with basic paint-making tutorials, my curiosity was sparked to produce a small collection of oil and watercolor paints from found minerals. I love creating inks and dyes from foraged plants around my home so this seems a natural progression down the "colors-from-nature" rabbit hole. There is something almost mystical about converting raw materials into a colorful expression of art.

There are four types of natural pigments: earth, mineral, organic, and alchemical. Earth pigments such as ochres are the oldest type of materials used to create paint. Found on the surface, they are crushed, dried, and ground into a powder. They can be coarse and require an investment of time to make a fine paint. Mineral pigments are found below the earth's surface in the form of precious and semi-precious stones such as lapis lazuli. Organic pigments are made from plants, animals, and insects. Alchemical pigments refer to human-made products to replace difficult-to-find natural materials or to create a paint that is safer to use such as lead and mercury-free pigments. Vermilion and synthetic cinnabar are two examples of alchemical.

Depending on what medium you want to employ, you can create either a watercolor or an oil paint. Both use the same ground pigment powder, only the process of producing the paint differs.

With learning a new craft, there comes a different story.

Up until the 19th century, artists had to make their own paints. Along comes the collapsible, tin paint tube in 1841 invented by the American painter, John Rand, and the painter's color palette was revolutionized. The technique of plein air oil painting was created given that artists could now take their medium anywhere.

Voilà - the birth of Impressionism.

While I'm happy I don't have to create all of my paints from scratch, I do enjoy the connection to the craft from start to finish. The tools you need are few and the amount of skill and time is modest, especially if you are making a small quantity of paint. Recipes differ between painters and I find that trial and error works well for finding what fits your taste.

Basically, paint consists of two components: pigment and vehicle. Pigments do not dissolve in the paint vehicle; rather, they are suspended in the medium. Mixing paint simply means mixing a solid and a liquid together into something you can then add to paper or canvas. To begin, you need a pigment. Stones are an easy find but require a bit of work to get them to a useable pigment powder. Be sure to wear safety goggles and work to chip away at the stone with a small hammer. Grind the small pieces into a fine powder with a mortar and pestle.

I found a few pieces of sandstone on my last trip to Burgundy and they were yellow with ochre. I found that I could just rub the rocks together and a fair amount of powder was created. I sifted the powder through my fine tea strainer (no longer my tea strainer as it has now been relegated to the studio) and with only a small amount of effort, I had a reasonable pigment.

Now you need a vehicle. You can simply dip a brush into water, add it to the powder pigment, and created a paste. Easy peasy. The thicker the paste, the thicker the paint, and the more intense the color.

This rock so wanted to give up its color. Just a bit of pounding and I had ochre pigment. I can understand why this part of France is a painter's paradise. Be on the lookout for rocks in your local area. Do a quick test by "writing" with the rock on another rock to see if it leaves color behind. You'll be surprised at the hues you can forage in your own backyard.

If you are looking to make a more refined paint, you'll need to perfect your vehicle with a few more steps.

Place a small amount of powdered pigment on the backside or rough side of a piece of marble. Look for an old marble cheese tray at your local thrift store. You want the rough side so that there is a bit of "tooth" for grinding the powder against. You can also use glass provided the edges are smooth. Use sandpaper or an etching cream to make the glass rough. If you are making a watercolor paint, add a drop or two of liquid gum arabic into a little well created by your finger in the middle of the powdered pigment. Blend together with a palette knife until it is crumbly. Then add a small amount of water and mix the paint until it is a paste. If you add too much water and the paint is runny, just add a bit more pigment powder.

If you're making an oil paint, forgo the gum arabic and add a few drops of oil to your powdered pigment. You can use linseed oil or sunflower oil. I like the results from a pressed walnut oil from a local source. Some recipes call for wetting the powder with a few drops of white spirits before adding the oil. If I think of it, I do it. But I found that it doesn't make that much of a difference in the small quantities of finished paint I produce. In both my watercolor and oil paints, I add a drop of clove oil as a preservative. If you want a "creamier" texture, some recipes call for a drop or two of honey or glycerine.

Now comes the fun part. Using a glass muller, grind the paint in a circular or figure 8 motion to work the water into all the particles. The goal is to make the paint "silent." Frankly, I just work the pigment until it feels good under my muller. Tip your brush into the paint and test it on a piece of paper. Do you like it? Then you're done. Too grainy still? Then get to work grinding a bit more.

Once the paint is where you like it, scrape it into a little watercolor pan or small seashell. I made a few watercolor palettes from air-dry clay with several places for different colors. I made them to fit into old tins that could travel with me anywhere.

Glass mullers can be expensive. So being a frugal and resourceful woman, I found an old carafe stopper at a brocante sale that had a wide and flat bottom. It has a "handle" to hold on to and it works perfectly. I'm quite pleased with myself. Cost me 50 centimes. You could also use a hard rock that has a flat bottom. Pourquoi pas?

Look for old tins that you can make into travel palettes for your watercolors.

When you recreate art from another time, you have a more in-depth understanding of the past and what life was like.
You connect with both the story and the medium.

I'm a bit intuitive when it comes to my art. What that means is that I can be haphazard with my record keeping. I do make a few notes and record the color when I create my inks, paints, or dyes. Keep a journal and make a swipe of color with the date and place. Add a little information on what worked well and what you would do differently. Your future self will be very happy that you did.

A few favorite finds made my moi in Le Shop
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As I mentioned last week, some of humankind's greatest works of art were produced from color coaxed from the earth. While you don't need to mix all your paints from their original mineral form, there is an overall satisfaction when you do. Engaging in the process of creating paint provides a clearer understanding of the story of the craft, itself. You find yourself deeply connected to the art and the history of another time and place. There's a bit of magic that happens in that learning space that makes rubbing a couple of rocks together worth every bit of effort.

Pick up a cool rock this weekend.
Karen 💕✨🎨🇫🇷

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For those who have inquired about my handmade botanical ink collection, you can purchase them from the amazing Penny Lark Finery based in Seattle, Washington. The set includes four inks all handmade from plant materials foraged near my home here in southwest France. Each one represents the four seasons: Rose Quince for spring, Pastel for summer, Acorn Cap for fall, and Oakmoss for winter. Support your makers so we can keep making. 💕