Blue Posts
Woad Blue Harvest
The annual harvest of our woad patch is something I look forward to every year. While it seems that the weather rarely cooperates (at least it wasn’t snowing, like last year …) I find it magical every time that profoundly…
Woad Harvest: Indigo
Over the past week I’ve been carefully cleaning the indigo pigment I harvested from my woad plants this year. This was possible because the morning after I was so disheartened to be left only with green form I opened my…
Woad Harvest
Over this part summer my wife and I left a couple of plots “unplanted” in our garden. Instead we shook out last years woad seeds over the earth and let the plots be. As I had hoped, the woad plants…
Ultramarine Blue: Purify Resin
When my children and I collected the sap from the pine trees, we also ended up with extra bits of bark, bugs and leaves. I didn’t think that this would help in my little project, so I set about purifying…
Marl Lake: Preparing Maya Blue
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…
Vivianite
My favourite blue pigment is made from vivianite. Not that I wish to imply that I see a lesser beauty in azure blue or ultramarine blue – both of which I enjoy immensely – but there is something in the…