Following on from what I learned in the first part of this exploration, I decided to try my hand at creating my own pastels.
For my pigment I gathered soil from my garden, and I also purchased a couple pigments so I could compare a professional pigment to my own stumbling attempts.
I never thought I’d say the phrase “I’m washing dirt”. But here I was washing dirt. It took a lot of rinsing before I was reasonably satisfied that I’d gotten out what I could.
The ultramarine was so blue I thought it would burn out my eyes. It really was incredible.
Well. The ultramarine worked best. But these are some hard pastels. The garden pigment is much much grainier than the profressional pigments, which is of no surprise.
Also, I mixed the gum Tragacanth at the wrong proportion. I was supposed to use the ratio 1:30 by weight, but I forgot that last part about weight. 1:30 by volume is a very different thing. Anyway, way too hard. I need a scale that can weigh such light things — my kitchen scale probably cannot.
But I’m not unhappy at all. The ultramarine is far far more intense than any of the ultramarine pastels that I have (Rembrandt, Terry Lewis) which indicates to me that claims of “pure pigment pastels” might be inflated a little.
With the Cassel earth, it is a nice dark tone that I could use like Paula Rego to cut through layers of other pastel.
With my garden pigment, I need to do another round and make refine the pigment further. I really want to make something with these.