Natural Pigment: Making Paint from Rocks.

Continuing on from my use of organic materials to add colour to my work I began exploring the idea of making paint from pigment from rocks. I did this by collecting soft, clay-like rocks when on a walk to Swanpool beach, then crushing them, first with a palette knife, then separating out any larger pieces by sieving, then grinding the product into a fine powder with a pestle and mortar.

I combined this rock powder with a range of different binding liquids to test which was the most suitable. I tested mixing the powder with water, gum Arabic solution and water mixable stand oil, finding that the most effective binder was gum Arabic solution, as it gave a suitably opaque finish and dried reasonably quickly in comparison to the water mixable stand oil, which took days to properly dry, leaving an oily texture behind and the water which didn’t bind the pigment very well.

Once I had developed my rock pigment paint I began using it to add some earthy tones to a selection of my pencil rock rubbings on calico fabric. I explored colour in both a subtle and a bolder way on different pieces; an example of a bold use of colour is my rubbing from concrete on half the surface of a square piece of fabric to which I covered the blank half in rock paint. This creates a contradiction in how the rubbing of that piece was taken from an artificial ‘rock’ (concrete) juxtaposed with the organically derived paint of the opposite half of the piece, with even the composition of the whole work appearing quite artificial – two halves split with a solid straight line.

Such a piece is reminiscent of some of the work by female Land Artist Michelle Stuart; it is almost a fusion of '#9 Zena Scroll' and 'Galesteo', both shown below. '#9 Zena Scroll', being a frottage piece, effectively maps the location at which it was made by literally capturing the details of the topography through the fabric. The automatic nature of this technique ties Stuart's work to Surrealism; she has little control over the outcome of the image, instead it is the landscape itself that determines the marks made. Despite its contrasting appearance, 'Galesteo' follows these same principles with pigment derived from earth, making the piece exude a sense of place.

#9 Zena Scroll (1973)

Galesteo (1977)

I continued my exploration of natural pigment with a few sketchbook pieces, some combining drawing with rock paint in a similar fashion to my rubbing/rock paint pieces, though with a less direct connection to the landscape and one purely rock paint piece. Despite the weaker sense of place in the drawings, I still feel that the combination of both the earthy tones of the paint, and the line and shape provided by the pencil or pen gives a more successful aesthetic than solely using rock paint. Though to better the combination works I would include frottage sections done on location to reestablish and enhance the sense of place of the works.