studio practice

swatcfhes using gum arabic and clay binders

How to store and use water-based pigments

How to use pigments-waterbased

After gathering your earth, you have ground it, levigated it, filtered it, dried it, sieved it and popped it into a jar, then labelled it. You have also swatched it and recorded it with the mediums you use.

So, from now on what is the best approach for everyday use?

I use watercolour and pigments mixed with claypaint which are both waterbased. The claypaint I purchase from https://www.celticsustainables.co.uk

I buy this claypaint as I go through a lot of it and for me to process the amount I use I would not be painting! To this claypaint I add my pigments that I have foraged, which produces beautiful soft muted colours, quite similar in behaviour and texture to Gouache, which is opaque. Watercolours on the other hand have transparency and luminosity and I often use these as an underpainting to provide light from within.

Recipe for watercolours:

1 part pigment:1 part gum Arabic

Put 1 teaspoon of pigment onto a glass slab in a small pile and with the back of a teaspoon create a shallow indentation. Into this pour 1 teaspoon of liquid Gum Arabic and a couple of drops of water. With a palette knife start to work the ingredients together. When all the pigment is coated in liquid, start mulling with a muller or a flat-bottomed heavy glass or paperweight.

mulling on a glass plate with muller to incorporate binder with pigment

This process of mulling isn’t about grinding the pigment finer, but is to thoroughly distribute the watercolour medium (or any medium for that matter) onto the pigment. If the mixture seems thick and resistent and hard to mull then add a few drops of water to loosen it up.When it looks and feels smooth and doesn’t sound gritty it is time to scrape it up with the palette knife and put it into jar lids, or shells or watercolour pans.  I pre-label each receptacle before putting the pigment in, because I tend to do a lot of colours in one session and it is very easy to get things mixed up!

Also, I keep notes and swatches of where each colour was found and how it behaves in various applications.

Allow it to dry and be aware there will be a fair bit of shrinkage as moisture evaporates as the pigment dries off. Once dried these are very easy to store-they can be stacked up on top of one another, or thrown in a box ready to be used on a painting expedition.

 watercolours stored in shells, lids, egg containers and jars

For mixing with clay paint however this is not so straightforward. Your pigment can’t just be tossed in a clay and stirred in -it needs to be thoroughly wetted before it gets with the clay. Ideally pigment should sit overnight in a MUD state before being used. And even more ideally it can be mulled on a glass with a muller for a very fine paint. This is the sort of work I set aside to do in between paintings, or on days when I just need to not think, days when I just don’t feel creative. I have a series of medium (250 ml) sized jars with lids, with MUD in them- just pigment and water, a thick honey consistency. This means you don’t waste anything- if it dries out you can just re-activate with more water. If you were to mix it with clay and store it, and the clay dries out, then you are left with something that will not reconstitute -and all that work that went into developing your pigments has gone to waste.

sadly these dried out and have to be tossed out (in the compost of course!)

  So, when you are ready to use clay, just add some MUD to your clay and it will be wetted and mix in beautifully. As long as it is stored in an airtight jar and you keep checking the moisture content it can be stored-but I always forget and have wasted a lot of my pigment in the process!