COLOURS FROM TREES

COLOURS FROM TREES: INKS, DYES & PAINTS

Led by Old Mill Arts, Lucy Lee and Edward Campbell

Thursday 8th Oct, 10am - 4pm

In this workshop you will learn about the rich and beautiful possibilities of working with trees to create colour and art materials.

During the course of the day different aspects of this intriguing subject will be covered. Firstly you will be shown how to make a range of drawing charcoals from different trees, and then how to transform the charcoals into rich, dark satisfying paints, and how to control textures and consistencies of paint for various effects.

You will then learn about the considerable variety of inks that can be created from trees, and experience making some which will be bottled for you to then take home at the end of the day. We have some vital tricks to share to help achieve colour rich inks with beautiful consistencies.

We will cover some inks you might be familiar such as oak gall and walnut, and others which are more obscure such as colours from alder cones or hemlock fir tree root.

In conjunction to inks we’ll also demonstrate the relationship between ink and dye, and on a small scale, show dyes colouring pre-mordanted wool.

The day will also include experimenting with   the vital reactions between tannin and iron to darken colours.  This can also be employed to achieve some interesting effects and time will be given to trying out making beautiful layered patterns.

Finally you will learn about tree based binders as well as how and to what surfaces, the colour of trees can be applied.

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