If you've been with us for awhile, you've probably noticed that my colors have changed over time. From the hot brights to a more subtle palette...
We both have our own theories why that is...;-)
Living in a more temperate climate than Montana or Iowa. Spending time by the ocean through the year. Higher humidity which softens all of the colors around us...
Whatever the real reason, I've gone deeper into earth pigments & the shades of nature. You can see one of my current palettes below. (These are Gambai Tambi watercolors from the famed sumi ink maker Kuretake in Japan.)
One of the qualities I like about these watercolors is that they layer easily once the underlayers are dry. So you get the slight shift of colors that happens as you move through space in the real world, or as the light changes throughout the day.
You might remember that last year, I got into actual earth pigments - clays & rusts & powdered stones from all over the world for the woodcut sculptures. I thought it'd be fun to try the traditional methods for making blockprint inks - things like grinding the pigment to get it smooth, mixing it in a rice paste to make the ink, following my copious notes so the colors are the same from piece to piece. For a moment, I easily imagined myself working by candlelight in a small mountain village in feudal Japan...
That lasted about an hour.
Since I'm a big one for 'what if?' & 'let's see what happens when we do this thing that just popped into my mind'...
What I do now is add a bit of pigment to the paste & then a little bit more & then another color & then a bit of medium to make it easier to work with & then I roll it out to see if I like the color. Which I usually don't. So I add a bit more pigment & test it again & it's only by happy accident that I get a color I've made before.
But I always seem to get a color I like that day. Just to be clear...:-)
So, I keep happily playing in the background. Making new colors. Rolling them out on print papers. Cutting them into shapes while I'm thinking of other things. Constructing little books & puppet dioramas about pirate queens.
We just got in a couple of books last week on natural dyes made from flowers & trees & weeds. Of course, I'm already imagining myself puttering about a small thatch house in the woods, cackling to myself while I brew the dyes in a giant cauldron...
It'll last about an hour & the kitchen will be a mess & it will smell vaguely of rotting swamp things & then I'll drag everything out to the woodshop & see what it looks like on the scraps of wood & paper I have stacked out there.
But you never know what'll come of it...:-)
Until next, with love, brian
