debbie osborn

processing Natural pigments

| debbieosborn

I have processed some of the pigments I’ve collected (see previous blog post) to make wax crayons.

First by grinding them down in a pestle and mortar.

Then sifting a couple of times to get as finer powder as possible. The grinding and sifting is an amazingly mindful process.

This powder/pigment can be used in its rawest form straight away, by just mixing with a little water. Someone had already use the raw pigment by the cliffs where I was collecting, because some of the rocks were saturated by the tide and the pigment was still wet. There is a further process to make the pigment dust finer which I may well refer to in a later post.

I used 50/50 of recycled waste candle wax with eco soya wax and mixed with some pigment to begin making my wax crayons and poured it into my silicone mould.

I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to make decent marks with them!

These are the crayons I’ve made so far with pigments as they were found. It is really very satisfying.

I must advise anybody who might be inspired, please collect rock/pigment that has fallen already, don’t collect direct from the cliffs.

Series with Yellow

| debbieosborn

Here is my next series of paintings, Series with yellow. Again working with pinks and yellow, but this time with some collage and pastel added. Again more subdued colour, but still quite colourful. I am happy with the more simple lines too, I consider them to be more honest. I find it’s very difficult to be honest when painting, I think sometimes I can try too hard and push in a direction the painting doesn’t want to go.