#wish it was august so we could make sap green ink with ripe buckthorn berries but oh well

[handweavers]

in the workshop tomorrow i'm teaching participants how to make maya blue pigment which is based around a really fun and interesting chemical reaction. it's how the maya and mexica historically made blue pigment to paint murals and ceramics and it creates a really beautiful bright turquoise blue that lasts centuries. it uses powdered indigo and white clay that's been ground very finely, and when the clay and indigo mixture is heated dry to 180°c in a pot the moisture in the clay turns to gas and the indigo takes its place, bonding the indigo to the clay and creating a stable compound that is lightfast and very bright and long-lasting. you need a lot less indigo to make maya blue than you would if you were making a pure indigo paint, and the clay acts as a stabilizer so it's an ingenious way of working with indigo pigment. it can then be mixed with gum arabic solution to make ink, and you can add honey to the ink to turn it into a watercolour paint, and add clove oil to keep bacteria from growing so it lasts longer. i'm so excited to share it with the participants, i think it'll be so fun ☺️

im also teaching them how to make carbon black ink and hibiscus ink and how to mix all of these pigments with soy milk to print/paint on textiles. i'm bringing some of my dye extracts (chestnut, myrobalan) and some pomegranate rinds and onion skins to show them how to make natural dyes and turn them into concentrated inks. i think that'll cover a wide area of possibilities with this craft and give them a jumping off point for future explorations, but also historical context bc i know a lot of the participants are curatorial studies grad students

#wish it was august so we could make sap green ink with ripe buckthorn berries but oh well