This week was spent on a masterclass on watercolors, taught by Birgit Reissland (RCE). Alongside lectures, we split into groups and created our own watercolors. The pigments we created were made from malachite, buckthorn, and Brasilwood.
We started preparations on Wednesday as some of the pigments needed to sit overnight. The majority of the morning was spent on lectures on the history and use of watercolors. The practical portion was spent grinding up gum arabic and malachite (separately) with a pestle and mortar while placing Brasilwood and Buckthorn in water to seep overnight.
Thursday we began by grinding the malachite into a finer grain for the pigment. The Brasilwood and Buckthorn were strained through a cloth before being heated on a hot plate and adding alum powder. We collected the pigments from these three colors and placed them in shells. We had trays with four possible binders: egg white(egg glair), egg yoke, parchment glue, and gum arabic. We tested each pigment with the variety of binders to see the possible differences. After all the testing we finished off the day by each making our own monogram on parchment, using the pigments we had made. At the end of the day we all had a small vials of pigments for us to take home.
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