The quest to increase my pallet of locality-based colours lead me to Cobalt, Ontario for the weekend. The opportunity to do this came to me by way of Reiner and Maggie, who had planned the weekend with another rockhounder, Robert, and they invited me to come along. Cobalt is a town with an amazing history. … Read more
Last year, when Maggie, Reiner and I were looking for magnetite along the shores of Lake Huron, we found a couple of nice samples of red jasper pebbles. At the time Reiner wondered aloud whether they could be used to make pigment colour, but with the rush of the project at full throttle, I really … Read more
Today the children and I began by pruning the grape vines and ended up making charcoal. With the spring here it was time to prune back the old growth on my vines so that younger, grape bearing vines could replace them. As I was carefully choosing and pruning, my son came up asked asked what … Read more
Since I began this project I have been pining for a good blue to use in my work. Growing some woad and thereby having indigo to use was a wonderful start.Certain concerns, however, were always in the back of my mind as to whether such pigment could really be counted light-fast. So I kept … Read more
Only one step remains in creating my first Mars Colour … Turning sand to magnetite, magnetite to iron, and iron to green vitriol has been a real education for me but with those steps successfully accomplished I had created the base for my yellow pigment. The best results I’ve had so far proceeded from the … Read more
The story of collecting the wood for the panel of this icon is one that I realized I haven’t told yet in this blog. So here it is: On February 5th, 2007 the temperature in our area went down to -32°C. To the Mennonites in our area this meant that it was the perfect time … Read more
Creating an iron bloom was very exciting for me, and if iron ore had any use as a pigment I’d be quite content to stop here; but it doesn’t. My next step in creating a good Mars pigment involves changing the iron ore into iron sulphate (or Green Vitriol). There are a lot of different … Read more
The other part of my first attempt that I wasn’t happy with was the lack of good walls for my bloomery. I’m not naturally someone who likes one-time use items and there was no hope of reusing the half melted stove pipe. So, I went looking for good firebrick … There was a place across … Read more
The magnetite collected at Kintail is great to have but there was one problem: Sand. No matter how careful we were I would guess that only 10% of what were carried away as magnetite. To solve this problem I decided to levy the one property that is indicative of magnetite: It is magnetic! After putting … Read more
Ever since my attempt to make iron ore failed I’ve been asking myself why? Many times in my life after something hasn’t gone according to plan that failure has actually became an opportunity to better understand my work. I guess in reconsidering how something works, and fitting into that a new experience, I’ve come away … Read more