Robert Garrett

Watercolor, represents to me at least a purity of form simple pigment on paper. Nothing to hide the pigment, and barely enough of something to hold the pigment to the paper.

There are a handful of pigments that I wanted to expand into my watercolor pallet.

1. Lapis Lazulite - one of the kings of pigments. I had tried before to add this to my pallet by purchasing a pre made tube of another manufacture. I was not happy with the results as the paint resulted in more of what I would think a ash grey should be.

2. Golden Ochre. A truly beautiful yellow, even more so when used lightly.

3. Raw Umber Dark. (cyprus) a pigment that I have just fallen in love with in oil, and I needed to replace the umber on my pallet.

So now that we have chosen our victims, we needed to choose something to grind them with. My choice was Natural Pigments Water Colour medium.

I decided to start off with Golden Ochre. I added a bit of water to the pigment, and then added just a bit of the water color medium and mulled this over for a bit. Then I placed the resulting mix into a half pan, to let dry. Rinsed off the muller and grinding plate, and my two pallet knifes that I use to make paints with.

and proceeded to make some umber, I dont know what happened with the umber. When it dried it became crumbly, and well the golden ochre shrunk considerably.

However after examing the results of the previous two attempts I tried the lazurite.. being much more careful this time around.

I did not use any water with the Lapis, just the watercolor medium. I also did not add quite as much to it as I had the Golden Ochre.

What I achieved is something, that demonstrates why Lapis Lazurite has been a favorite amongst artists, for as long as there have been artists.

A wonderful transparent blue, much more transparent than I thought it would be. And with slightly more of a purple tinge than I had thought it would have. I have since found it to be invaluable especially in toning transparent colors.

So the key here in making watercolors is the amount of watercolor medium, and not adding any water to it. it also seems to be like oil in that you need to experiment a bit to get it right for each pigment you are trying to make.

The golden ochre and the umber both work as watercolors, they are just not of the ideal consistency in cake form as I would like. This though is entirely my fault and I will correct it the next time round. This is also one of the benefits of experimenting with half pans, as it doesn't take much pigment so mistakes are not quite so costly even when using fairly expensive pigments.

RG