I’m taking a year long course through the amazing Plants and Colour UK, all about hand made inks, pigments and paints. Each month features a different instructor introducing a different technique, and this morning I got to watch Carolyn Sweeney of Strata Ink show us how she makes a watercolour paint from a Madder lake. What is a lake, you ask? Well, it’s a specific way to getting a dry, fairly high intensity pigment from plant material, and it’s the kind of thing you can learn more about in the course.
Carolyn showed us her printmaking set up, and reminded us that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on purchasing specific gear in order to get started down this particular rabbit hole.
In honour of this, I wanted to repost a video I made in 2022 on the same topic. It shows some of the thrift store equipment I used, in order to get stated making my own watercolour paint. (Apologies for the small format, I made it in vertical video, since that’s what everyone was posting to IG at the time).
So head on out to your local thrift store and see what you can drum up to use as a muller and plate. It’s also likely you will find a mortar and pestle there, be sure to grab that up too. And let me know in the comments if you have used an alternative to a muller and glass plate set up!
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