plant paints

drawing with walnut ink

| lemonbalm79

I love outlining and detailing my paintings with fine ink. But even the best artist quality ink pens have been a huge pain in the butt, always getting ruined when trying to draw over dried paint. It feels wasteful, all those plastic pens just giving up so easily. And I’m constantly scribbling them on a separate page in attempts to revive them, only to just get a few more lines before they crap out for good. I had an aha! moment while enjoying another amazing artist residency program at Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

I arrived here in Virginia in mid-January. Not a great time to forage for botanical inks, but a good time to stay indoors and be creative. I happened to be here during the Arctic blast system that sent snow to Florida! The highs were in the teens, lows in the single digits for many days. All the plants are dead or dormant. But I did know from the previous times I roamed about in warmer weather here, that the stand of Black Walnut trees behind the farm might have some fallen and frozen fruits. I just couldn’t help myself, so I got on all my winter gear and wandered around, trying to remember where exactly those trees were, and then searching around the ground underneath for the fruits once I found them.

I found some in the snow, decomposing. Yay! I gathered a few, washed them off, and then let them soak in snow for several days in the studio. One had some dead little grubs inside, so I accidentally took some winter bird food away from the critters. Although I wonder what they taste like, soaked in that intense tannic juglone chemical that keeps many other plants from growing nearby.

After soaking in melted snow for a few days, I gently simmered the watery brown liquid for an hour or so until is was concentrated enough to my liking. I then strained, bottled, and labelled a little jar – and that’s it.

As I was doodling and painting various birds and getting frustrated again with those dang pens, I wondered….could I find a dip pen and try my own recently made ink?

It seems anything you need at this place, appears if you ask. When I first arrived, I inquired about a humidifier for my room, as the dryness was parching me. I’m so used to Florida humidity, and not adapting well to the cold and dry. Headaches, thirst, bloody nose. Ugh. The next day, James (our artist resident coordinator) showed up at my door with one! So I asked – might there be a dip pen around I could borrow? And there was!

So I tried my freshly made walnut ink and it’s a dream! The detailed lines I got with this simple pen were amazing. Neither the ink or pen were ruined by the paint at all. I was delighted and surprised at how long the ink lasted in the little dip pen reservoir, before needing another dip.

This is a game changer for my work. I can now use my own handmade inks and avoid wasting plastic pens. It’s also really pleasurable to hold an old and effective tool in my hands, doing slow and methodical work.

The only downside I see thus far, is that that the walnut ink is not waterproof. So I can’t paint over it once the final lines are drawn. This particular nib also seemed a bit scratchy, maybe from being practiced with by amateurs like me. Perhaps a new one, in a more skilled hand will glide better. It will also likely work better on smoother, hot press watercolor paper compared to the cold press and more textured paper I tend to use.

I have so many colorful botanical inks in my collection, and can’t wait to try them! I just ordered a sampler set of nibs and a holder so that I can keep practicing when I get home. I might try making my own version of India ink, from burnt pine bark chunks I have from a prescribed burn site.

community art

| lemonbalm79

Last winter I started bringing my art out into the community more. I now feel a bit more confident sharing what I know about natural paints and inks, and have accumulated enough material to bring along for show and tell and play.

Gratefully, I was a recipient of an Alachua County Art Tag Mini Grant. Thanks to those that purchase the fancy “I Support the Arts” license plates and Visit Gainesville, there are small grants available to local artists like me. As part of this gift, I brought workshops to a diverse crowd of folks. Here’s a little snapshot of what I’ve been up to the last several months!

As part of the Florida Heritage Foods Project’s Crops & Colors Festival in early December at GROW HUB, I created a work station for folks to explore natural pigments and play around with them. Not to brag but I think my table had the most engagement and the most lingering folks around! There’s just something about working with these natural materials that feels relaxing and soothing. I was excited to see many new faces and get to re-connect with folks I hadn’t seen in a while.

** All these photo blocks are slideshows – be sure to slide through them all! **

Then later that month with the most perfect weather for more outdoor art making, I spent time with the amazing kids enrolled in the George Washington Carver After School Science Club run by the Cultural Arts Coalition. Every Wednesday, my co-workers at Working Food, Jesse and Jenna bring gardening, food and art exploration to the club as a fun way to learn about science. This is such a beautiful connection because George Washington Carver was not only a friend to farmers bringing regenerative agricultural techniques to to poor southern farmers, but he was also an artist himself, using natural pigments! Thanks to Ryan Smolchek for capturing a few great moments for some of these adventures!

In the new year, I spent time at the Art Hub – one of my favorite places nestled at GROW HUB where I spend many days tending to the seeds and gardens that are my life’s work with Working Food. Once a week, UF Center for Arts in Medicine provides art classes for the staff members and volunteers. On a chilly winter’s day (for Florida!) in January, we played with vibrant spring colors harvested from last year: poke, turmeric, prickly pear fruits, roselle calyxes, and butterfly pea flowers. All grown on site except for the prickly pear which came from a robust patch of thorny plants on 10th Avenue near my house.

A couple weeks later, we played with indigo! This one was extra fun because myself and one of the staff at GROW HUB, Sarah H. grew the indigo plants (Indigofera suffruticosa or Guatemalan Indigo), which were gifted to me years ago by Jenn Rex, and now we can’t get rid of this plant, which I’m not mad about! We harvested the plants and went step by step through the specialized process required to obtain the pure blue pigment. Students got a chance to learn about mulling, part of the process of making watercolor paints.

Then as spring was at it’s most perfect in mid March, with spiderwort blooming all around, and a stash of roselle from the fall harvest in the freezer, LeAnn Averill from A Thousand Leaves Herb Shop and I did an amazing collaboration – Paint Medicine! A lovely group of folks shared in the herbal magic LeAnn and I brought together. Celebrating roselle, goldenrod, spiderwort and poke – familiar local plants to those who notice, we discussed the virtues of each as medicine or food, and as a pigment source. Students got to taste spiderwort fermented soda and roselle tea, sample goldenrod tincture, and rub a poke root salve into their skin. Then we experienced each plant and the pigments they offered.

The last workshop (for now) was at the end of May, and once again with the fun and curious kids of the George Washington Carver Science Club. They had a special field trip out to GROW HUB, where we started off our adventures at the mulberry tree! We harvested some abundant berries for snack and for making ink later. No one had ever done that before and we were all so giddy and grateful, thanking the mulberry tree for all the goodies.

This time they got to learn about the science of plant pigments – the chemistry that is pigments like anthocyanin (red, purple and blue), chlorophyll (green), carotenoids (yellow and orange). And how these colors signify nutrition and healthy foods, help the plants in various ways, and are colorful and may be used in art!

I demonstrated the chemical reaction that causes the precipitation of plant pigments that are pulled out of solution and into a solid form that can be used for paint making. I did it with poke berries that were harvested last summer and the hot pink foam was a crowd pleaser for these curious little scientists and gardeners! I also had some dried poke pigment they mulled into watercolor paints using my homemade binder solution of local honey, apple tree gum, thyme oil and water. Jesse, my amazing and creative co-worker then introduced a mini tie-dye activity and they made beautiful little swatches of colorful flags using turmeric, spiralina, roselle and sumac.

The grand finale will be a collaborative art show at Cypress & Grove Brewery in August, where we’ll show some artwork and photos of this nature based goodness!

The youth and GROW HUB workshops were proudly funded in part, by the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners through Art Tag proceeds and Visit Gainesville – Alachua County, FL.

worm theory

| lemonbalm79

My friend Jesse shared this poem with me and I just absolutely love it! Since reading it, I’ve been daydreaming about painting worms, compost magic, mycelium, decay and renewal soaked in ecstasy of simple but vital things – in a world often unseen or appreciated by most of us.

Feeding the Worms
by Danusha Laméris

Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds
all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,
I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine
the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples
permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,
avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,
almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure
so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,
forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

I have great fondness for worms and their role in creating living soils, and inspiring curiosity and connection. Having worked with children in gardens over many years, I’ve developed the Worm Theory. I believe these creatures can be a gateway to opening up curiosity and compassion for all other creatures. Worms are typically slow moving, and their lack of legs, inability to sting or bite, fly or crawl up your sleeve or into your face, means they can be held in peace and safety for close observation, as they tickle your hands, trying to move back into darkness. This acceptance of creatures so different from ourselves, opens up the mind and heart to others- that don’t feel as safe and easy. Next, they’ll be looking at rolly-pollies, roaches, other beings that freak out adults (pointing at myself here, I still squeal and recoil at the sight of a roach). I’ve seen kids name the worms, caress them, and even hold worm funerals, mourning the loss of a friend.

Worm Theory suggest that their gentle nature, facilitates connections to other worlds and lives not our own. Worms allow us to overcome the ick factor that may either be innate or learned, or a mix of both.

It turns out, they are fascinating creatures too, with much to learn about! Our youth program at Working Food would be a lot less fun without worms! Often, a simple worm activity ends up taking up an entire session and we just scrap the rest of our best laid plans, to go with the worm flow. Here are just a few things I know:

  • They are hermaphrodites.
  • They consume bacteria and fungi that decompose organic materials (i.e. they don’t actually eat the apple core you toss into the compost bin, they eat the microbes that eat the apple).
  • Their poop (aka worm castings) is black gold, a probiotic bliss for plant life.
  • They are an important source of food to so many other animals.
  • They have the ability to sense the world over the surface of their bodies; their permeable, moist skin is covered in chemoreceptors and they breath, taste, and sense light and vibrations over their body surface.

Worms painted with senna and avocado. Black soil is cabbage palm charcoal mixed in with splotches of black walnut, avocado and plantain. Various decomposing items painted with marigold, avocado, beets, cochineal. White mycelium added with a gel pen.

reciprocity as told by asters & goldenrods

| lemonbalm79

Part 5 of a series of posts about my artist in residency experience at Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

I’m back home and adjusting to normal life after such a luxuriously long time of freedom and quiet for creativity, flow, rest and reflection. Fortunately, I’ve made time to keep some of the flow and inspiration going.

My first day back to work, I was cleaning up some Hopi Red Dye Amaranth seeds. I wanted a gentle and enjoyable re-entry to work, and seed cleaning is one of my favorite things to do. So I was glad when Sarah said that’s what she needed us to do. An accidental blowing of the lightweight chaff into a nearby bucket with some wet seeds, seemed to be a sign when I peeked inside: make some plant paint! 

Hopi Red Dye Amaranth is an ancient grain crop cultivated by the Aztecs and still with us today. Prized for its ability to lend color to food and fiber, it sure doesn’t take long for color to leek out! These watermelon seeds were left in a wet bucket nearby, as the seeds I was cleaning blew around the lightweight chaff. Universe telling me to keep creating!

I collected all the chaff and played with it this weekend. I also made some paints from turmeric powder I’ve had on hand for a couple of years and played with some moringa and beauty berries a few different ways. They were all abundant and practically calling for me to  play with them from the backyard, just as the amaranth chaff was.

The birds and I couldn’t be happier about the plump beauty berries!

I was thinking a lot about the beautiful hikes Mike, Huxley, Okra and I did as we wound our way slowly south, stopping at Shenandoah and then Pisgah National Parks. From the mountains of Virginia to the coastal plains of Florida, goldenrod a was in full bloom! In the mountains, purple asters were also gloriously in full bloom, and were especially stunning when mingling with the goldenrods. 

Art Loeb trail head in Pisgah National Forest was loaded with asters and goldenrods, and amazing views.
Tough as nails growing on a rock face in the mountains. Pretty alone, but stunning together, below!

They reminded me of a chapter from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass. An entire chapter is devoted to this stunning pair that often bloom together with showy fields of purples and yellows. It’s hard not to fall in love, and be drawn in. Robin wonders and marvels as have I, why they look so beautiful together? 

Basic color wheel theory has them at opposite sides – complementary or reciprocal colors. Putting them together makes each more vivid. Just a touch of one will bring out the other. 

Fun fact: although bee eyes perceive flowers much differently than human eyes, it turns out this reciprocal color display appears similar to us both! I’ve always wished I could have bee vision in a garden or field of flowers, and this might be the closest I get! Interestingly, when these two plants grow together, they both receive more pollinator visits than they do when growing alone. 

Better together, right?!

The pairing is lived reciprocity; wisdom that the beauty of one is illuminated by the radiance of the other. Reciprocity is a major theme throughout this book and one that I think, if we could all embrace and act upon, would give us a much kinder world. I’ve thought a lot about this word and what it means since reading this book.

Back to the Florida yard- the beauty berries were fun and one way of preparing them led to a lovely purple hue – ASTERS! That might not seem surprising, but just on their own simmered in water created more of a grayish purple when dried. But a touch of citric acid turned it into a vibrant pink, that dried purple on the paper. I left plenty for the birds, just taking a couple big handfuls to experiment with. I had some decent yellow options already, plus some new turmeric hues-  GOLDENROD + ASTER CENTERS!

So I had the palette, and it was go time!

Set back up at home, re-creating Oak Spring Garden vibes with my plant palette, sketchbook, and goldenrod for inspiration!

I agreed with myself on Friday, that me and my creative bee would get some time to buzz and play this weekend, despite the somewhat long and pressing list of things to do and catch up on this coming week. Oh, and the hurricane we have been watching that might come visit us this coming week was also on my mind. But worrying less and creating more seemed like the better option.

I included a Pearl Crescent Butterfly here among the pollinators. I first really noticed these small butterflies at Oak Spring Gardens in a way that some might find surprising for butterflies: swarming over a stinking mouse carcass. Many butterflies, even if they are pollinators, find value on carcasses and poop because of the salts and minerals they can’t get from a plant’s sugar water. I’d noticed them as well as some swallowtail and buckeye butterflies also enjoying some poop on the road. Nature doesn’t waste any waste! Is this reciprocity? I don’t know, but it’s neat!

Pearl Crescent butterflies finding sustenance on a decaying mouse. Funny story. I was calling into our monthly staff meeting when I noticed this scene as I was wandering, listening, and chiming in now and again. I guess I wasn’t muted because Sarah later said (when I sent her this picture), “is that what you gasped about during the meeting?” Oh she knows me so well! I didn’t know I gasped, but wouldn’t you if you saw this with your own eyes?

Nature never ceases to amaze me, and find me deep in wonder and curiosity; hunched over, on my knees, gazing up, or zooming in for a closer look at what most people pass by. A classic Mary Oliver poem that is pasted to the front inside cover of my sketchbook reflects this wonder in the small things so well.

The Summer Day

by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

eventually we all turn brown

| lemonbalm79

Part 4 of a series of posts about my artist in residency experience at Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

In my ongoing experimentation with creating paints from plants on site, I have learned what most people dabbling in or perfecting this art have as well: lots of things turn brown! It makes a whole lot of sense if you stop for a second and think about it. All living beings will eventually return to the soil and turn some shade of brown. Dying plants, seed pods, fallen leaves, decaying bones and flesh….

So macerating petals and simmering leaves with the hopes to preserve vibrant hues is not in line with nature just doing her thing. The trick is figuring out if it’s possible to capture the pigments and preserve them before they turn brownish. Some will oblige, others will not. For those that will not, the fleeting glimpse of their living pigments on paper is only meant to be enjoyed for a short period of time. Or perhaps best enjoyed on the living plant.

What’s our obsession with preserving things in perpetuity anyway? Avoiding change or worse – death! Why do we allow ridiculous things like embalming bodies in formaldehyde so they don’t rot and turn brown? I wrote about death awhile ago. It’s all around us, all of the time but our culture prefers to ignore it, and be afraid of it. You and me, and everyone we love are going to die one day and turn brown (if we go the natural way of things and avoid formaldehyde and cremation). I’m not being morbid, or pessimistic, or dark. Quite the contrary! Accepting that we are not here forever, allows us to fully embrace and love the hek out of this ephemeral life! This colorful, beautiful, ephemeral life. 

Trust me. As a cancer survivor, every precious day is more vibrant because of death.

An abundance of vibrant colors that will all one day…turn brown! Top left to bottom right: Black Swallowtail butterfly on Thistle, making cyanotypes with garden flowers, the formal garden at Little Oak Springs, plant based paints, Rudbeckia and Aster(?) along the Appalachian Trail.

In my early disappointment at watching vibrant green or yellows turn brown, I looked around me and realized – it’s just fine! Plenty of pretty beings living or dead are some shade, or many shades of brown. The Polyphemus moth, and actually most moths and many butterflies, rabbits, coyotes, milkweed and thistle seed pods, spiders a plenty, lots of birds fully brown or with brown bellies or throats, falling leaves, grasses going to seed…. So I embraced the browns and the shades of them I was getting. 

Everyone turns brown. Top left to bottom right. Polyphemus moth and Dobson fly, Crab spider on grass, Thistles going to seed, and Common Milkweed seed pods all at once went POOF!

Anyhow, back to plant pigments! 

One that particularly made me happy was the Eastern Black Walnut. A common complaint is that the fallen fruits stain things when they drop. PAINT! In the same way I always spot SEEDS! whenever I’m out and about, I am now looking and wondering….PAINT?! One of our cohort mates here Jackie, a botanist from the Dominican Republic, found a Black Walnut tree here and brought me some of the fruits to play with. 

Eastern Black Walnut tree in the early morning sun, and their fruits!

The Eastern Black Walnut is a native tree to the Eastern US, and considered a “pioneer” species meaning they are one of the first trees to establish in disturbed areas like along roadsides, in fields, and forest edges; places that are more open. They don’t thrive in forests with other trees and lots of shade. They must spread out in full sun to live their best life. They secrete a chemical into the soil called juglone which repels some species of plants. A partial list includes includes tomatoes, potatoes, peas, peppers, cabbage, alfalfa, serviceberry, chestnut, pine, arborvitae, apples, blueberry, blackberry, cherry, azalea, rhododendron, lilac, hydrangea, privet, and members of the heath family. But not all plants are poisoned by juglone, some will thrive and others can tolerate it. 

The tree is lovely in her own right, but of course as humans we need to know the uses for living beings to understand them or find value. So, it turns out that walnut trees makes fantastic lumber, the staining fruits are used to make dyes and inks, the nuts are edible for many wildlife and of course humans too, and the abrasive shells have many industrial uses for blasting, sanding and filtering things. 

An anonymous French watercolor of a Black Walnut from Virginia, made early the nineteenth century when the tree was being naturalized in France. Photo courtesy of An Oak Spring Pomona by Sandra Raphael. Oak Spring Garden Library in Upperville, Virginia, 1990. 

The process of making paint from the Black Walnut fruits was simple. What I loved most is that it required nothing but time, water, and heat to prepare. 

I cracked the fruits with a hammer against a hard floor, to remove the skin from the seed and shell. I broke the skin into as many pieces as possible and covered them with water. I did not wear gloves, but kind of wish I had. My hands were stained brown, fading to yellowish tan for many days. I don’t really care, but it was pretty obvious and perhaps something to consider next time! They soaked for 48 hours out in the sun while I was tinkering with other things in my studio. The water turned a lovely deep, iridescent mix of yellowish-greenish-brownish hues as the oils, pigments and tannins leached out. Then I strained out the chunks and gently simmered the solution for about 1 hour on the stove. I let it settle and tried to take a photo of the lovely design on the surface of the inky water, but only got my reflection! 

Soaking the fruit skins, the strained and simmered solution sitting awhile, and me trying to take a photo of the last phase and seeing my silly self in the reflective liquid. Lovely, lovely, browns and friends along the way.

That’s it! Next up for all my paints, I will be adding a solution made of gum arabic, honey, thyme oil and glycerin that all together help bind the pigments to the paper, prevent decay, and slow the drying time of the paint. I’ll share my “recipes” later on once I’ve fiddled and had a chance to compile all my notes and color charts. 

Here are just a couple of lovely brown creatures I created. They are all using only paints I’ve made here from local plants! 

The iconic rock walls covered with lichens and mosses are familiar here, as are the familiar Carolina Wrens that belt out their tunes. Little Wren’s browns were created using Black Walnut’s Ink (the dark brown on his back), and brownish hues of Narrow-leaf plantain and yellow onion skins mixed to make his brownish belly. The rocks that are brown are various invasive plants from around here that I acquired during a workshop I attended.
Polyphemus moth. Those antennae get me every time! Various shades of brown used include pink onion skins, plantain leaf and Black Walnut fruits. The mossy inspired background is a wash of orange marigold with splashes of beets, yellow onion skins and butterfly pea.

painting with plants

| lemonbalm79

Part 3 of a series of posts about my artist in residency experience at Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

Within 2 days of arriving and digging in, I immediately became curious about plant pigments. My first volunteer day was at the Biocultural Conservation Farm, harvesting plants that produce an indigo pigment. I wandered over every evening to peek inside the vat that was fermenting away and pulling out pigment, and dipped a few papers in to see what would happen. After that, I was hooked, and started looking around at all the other plants in the gardens and in the landscapes in a whole new light. Plants are just so dang fascinating! 

Dipping a few print papers into the fermenting vat.

Pretty soon my studio turned into a lab, with plants in various stages of experimental extraction. I was going off the School of Google, with only bits of information as the internet is spotty here and I wouldn’t always get to all the videos or pages I wanted. Chatting with folks here over the last couple of weeks, and attending an ink making workshop using invasive plants, has added to my growing amateur hobby. 

Every plant requires some experimentation, and I had to really use my sciency brain to think about acids, bases, chlorophyll, carotenoids and the like (i.e. the colorful parts of plants) and how they are best pulled and preserved. They all have their own personalities and this is the fun part of learning, where art and science blend together! I’m so freaking curious about this now, that I am sure it will become part of my artistic tool kit, creating a collection of my own hand made and non toxic paints. 

Keeping track of who’s who over time, concentrations etc. More experiments to come. Greens have been hard, working on figuring out how to pull forward that magical chlorophyll!! With regular muddling and soaking they just make….brown!

It’s especially intriguing for a few reasons. 

First, it takes the creation of art even deeper, creating your own raw materials from what’s available. Not only can I paint, I can now make my own paint! Pulling pigments from what surrounds me just feels so dreamy and comforting; creating seasonal palettes of place. 

There are kestrels here, always swooping over the grassy fields, and I had the palette! Light blue = butterfly pea. Darker blue = indigo. Gold = yellow onion skins, Background I’d hoped to be a vibrant pink sunset, faded quite a bit but is a mix of yellow onion skins, poke berry, Hopi dye amaranth and avocado skins + pits. Local plants pressed and glued. The glue did not play well with the natural paints and ate them up, giving the weird halo effect around each blade. It’s kind of a cool and unexpected transformation.

Second, using natural plant paints has encouraged me to let go of a lot. Which is always a good practice in life, generally. Letting go! I no longer have an exact color match for the insect, bird or plant I’m painting, but I have what I have – and it’s beautiful. The expected result of pigment rarely comes forth, and is fleeting as it ages. Hot pink pokeweed subdues over 24 hours into a lovely deep rose, for example. Purple carrots go from bright purple to a lovely dark blue. These don’t flow like the professional paints I’m used to and the colors are unpredictable, at least until I experiment more and figure some of this out. It’s just so much fun to let colors run across the page! Seeing how how onion skins play with beets, how plantain mingles with butterfly pea to make a lovely grayish blue. I’ve just felt so much joy in the process of messy, unpredictable and ephemeral materials. 

Way outside my “usual”, but a must paint! I had the palette, and the thistles and goldfinches are so abundant here! The messy black ink is made from wood ash and I do not like it! I’ll stick with my black pen, or see how the Black walnut ink I’m working on now will substitute. This is so very messy and not detailed like I usually do, but let me tell you how much fun I had making a mess! Sky = butterfly pea. Finch bodies are combined with plantain leaf (brownish hue for the female top left) and a mix of invasive weeds making the bright yellow (Barberry and Mahonia). Thistles are purple carrots and a mix of other reds/pinks. Pale orange monarch = some invasive weed I lost track of during the workshop! Green = Bush Honeysuckle.

This process is allowing for the creation of cleaner and gentler products.  Many artist’s supplies are harmful to our Earth, made of all sorts of icky things like synthetic and toxic chemicals, plastics, metals etc. While handmade plant paints aren’t perfect, with some of the inputs needed to extract and bind the pigments so they actually function as paint, dye or ink – they are better options, and there is room to improve. I have been exploring and thinking about the gentlest and most minimal  inputs that will still create beautiful materials, that don’t harm the beings I’m inspired to draw, paint or print.

There are some things I’ll never be able to give up, like paper, black micro pens, and some of the very rich commercially made watercolor paints and inks. But this process is allowing me to think more about resources including those readily abundant from my own backyard. Which is currently the rural countryside of Virginia with the most incredible gardens that create quite the palette!

I can’t wait to paint Florida colors! Hopefully I’ll still find the time for such play when I get back to regular life.