
A composition using the paints I made in the Michel Garcia workshop at Slow Fiber Studios. I’m playing with value completely. The grid paper is some a friend gave me. I think it is meant for people to use while practicing calligraphy. Chinese? Japanese? The paper is thin–almost like tissue paper. Hence the wrinkles. I did another version with a different set of my indigo paints–and the brush marks don’t show as much. I’m not sure why they show so much with these, but that’s the way they “painted”.

A composition I made as a collage. I made many marks and textures with the paints. Cut them apart and reassembled them. I have a lot more to cut up and put together when I have time!

Here is my pallet. I arranged the two batches in order light to dark for choosing which value of blue I needed for the compositions, etc. The “Maya Blue” set of paints were used for the first photo. I probably didn’t grind the pigment enough and/or didn’t “do” the egg white or egg yolk binders properly. The letter W is for egg white. The Y is for egg yolk and the G for gum arabic which are what I used for binders to make paints out of the pigment. (Made from indigo powder and various clays as binders.)

Here are some of the tubes of paint I made.

Here is my first little composition. It was going to be a weave pattern, but I screwed up the value on the first line so just didn’t follow the order of lights and darks where they were supposed to be. I like it quite a lot.