Watercolour paint – Celia Wilson

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Recent work 2021

By: Celia Wilson 3 February, 202221 May, 2022

Uncategorizedart, environment, nature, pigments, Plant prints on paper, plants, River Eyre, Watercolour paintLeave a Comment

I have been making books, prints and other things…

5/10 EV Herbarium Exotica I C Wilson 2021

A Travellers Journal. I followed the Handmade Book Club instructions and made a 2022 Planner – don’t know how I will cope with that concept… Canvas painted with runs of Golden Acrylic High Flow ink.

Before Christmas I made a few small travellers journals to give as presents. This one’s cover was made from the carton of a six pack beer – just loved the colours.

I took part in the show – Oxford Papermakers: Waiaraki Eyre River Project 4 – 28 November 2021
Alison Fleetwood, Katie Hallam, June Inch, Casey Macaulay, Elaine Steenhart, Tessa Warburton and Celia Wilson

A collage of dry point prints showing the exotic weeds, coloured with local rock pigments, that thrive on the local braided river, Waiaraki/Eyre River. The course of the river near Oxford is depicted – adapted from images on Google Earth. I have used some paper that we made from these weeds. I started this work at the Printmakers Open House at the Oxford Gallery.

2. A bit of fantasy to show the local environment from river bed to mountains: Collaged handmade papers from the river plants, local rock pigments, and home made charcoal rubbings of collagraph plates. The backing paper is Harakeke paper made by Mark Lander who made the hollander beater that the Oxford Gallery Papermakers use. The Tree Lupin is painted with ink from gorse petals.

More about this show can be found at the gallery website under ‘Exhibitions’:- https://oxfordgallery.org.nz/

Birdlings Flat Pigment

By: Celia Wilson 25 August, 202126 August, 2021

Handmade paint, How to make paint, Paint making workshops, Pigments, Uncategorizedearth pigments, pigments, volcanic rock, Watercolour paintLeave a Comment

Not sure why I had not tried this method of making pigment before. The volcanic rock is mainly red but has a lot of other minerals in it, and as you can see the ground pigment varies in red-brown colours. The ground pigment fell through the file onto the paper. I made paint with the pigment you see here.

The lower left swatch of paint wet in wet shows how the different pigments can separate out. This is on 100gsm paper in my test book, so the cockling of the wet paper has enhanced the separation of the different pigments.

I had been reading up on middle stone age pigment manufacture which included tests of possible way of extracting the powder. The article discussed direct grinding on the grindstone and I wondered why I had not tried this before (even though I knew about this method). I don’t have a grindstone, so the file was substituted. This method will work well on this type of rock which is relatively soft compared with some of the water-shaped rocks of rivers I see. So on rocks similar to the one here, I will definitely use this in preference to my hammer!

‘Direct grinding is the most efficient method to extract fine powder from softer shales and siltstones.’
Rifkin, Riaan F. “Processing Ochre in the Middle Stone Age: Testing the Inference of Prehistoric Behaviours from Actualistically Derived Experimental Data.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 31.2 (2012): 174–195. Web.