Book of Kells Project: Applying Green, Red and Blue

  Glas:

 

 Months ago I made iris green and, because unlike verdigris, it would go bad, I froze it to use later.  Now it was time to bring it out and let it thaw.

This turned out to be quicker than I thought.  I was worried it might be too thin, but as it thawed, I realized the freezing had done may work for me.  While some water remained frozen, I could pour off the green liquid that had a lovely concentration.  

And it was green now, not dark teal, and certainly not purple.  I had thought I might have to add a couple drops of water with soda ash to shift the color.  But I didn't.  It was green right out of the jar.  And it flowed great.  Not as smooth as the "gall" ink, but pleasant enough.   I applied it with a brush and it went rather quickly.

Iris lake was also used for a darker, forest green.   It would need to be mixed carefully like the other lake pigments.  

In retrospect, I regret not making verdigris.  My concerns about corrosion would have likely been mitigated by the thick paper being used.   Certainly in the short term it would have been safe.  Perhaps next time.

Dearg:

 

This was the moment madder was made for.  Having figured out how best to mix a smooth pigment, I almost ruined it by rushing the process.  The first madder I applied, the first lake of deep crimson, was grainy.  I just stopped, let the mix sit and did something else for a while.  When I came back, it was perfect. Then I ground and mixed the second lake of red and applied it. Things were coming along.

 

Gorm:

It couldn't last.   Woad blue was turning out to be my personal nemesis. Try as I might, I could not bring the bright blue of the dye or the deep royal blue of the extracted indigo into a pigment of equal vibrancy on paper.  After some reading, I heard about using indigo flower, the simmering "bloom" on the top of the indigo vat. As it happened, I was making small vats for another art project, so I just brought one in and used a brush to lift the bloom. 

 

It's not an efficient process.  I started to suspect that if I had mixed freshly extracted, still liquid indigo I would have had better results.  It did make a bluish wash, a tint really, and was better than the earlier blue gray disaster.   But it wasn't blue.   Then I remembered the columbine lake. 

 

This is what I used for the main patch of blue, painting over the indigo flower.  I left a border untouched so one could compare the effect.  

 In another belated reversal of opinion, I think I should have left the indigo flower.  It was subtle but more natural.  I suppose if the columbine lake completely fades, the indigo will come back into it's own.

 

Book of Kells Project: Back up Blue

I did it on a whim and I didn't regret it:  a lake of deep blue columbine.

It wasn't something planned.  I stumbled across a great mass of flowers in a public area near a local park and thought, "why not?"

I actually grow this flower.  It's a rich royal blue, almost purple, columbine.  My plant, and it's daughter plants, was a volunteer at another local park that kept getting mowed down until I rescued it in the dead of night.  It's not a native plant so I was helping, right?

 Anyway, after getting lake pigment extracting down to a competent level, I was on the look out for newer materials.  I started looking at flowers thinking, "What color could you produce?"  

Now my columbines don't produce masses of flowers.  Just enough to be a splash of color in the shade garden.  But there were so many of this stand, I could easily pluck a handful for a test lake batch without striping them.  As a general rule, unless it'd a dead common plant, like dandelion, never take more than you need, and always leave some to carry on.

Now most of the plants I experimented with, when laked, produce a color that shifts a little or significantly from the original.  Blue iris goes green. Red Rhododendron goes purple.  Even madder shifts to a different red.  A mullein lake came out sunny yellow, but yellow dye plants are generally strait forward that way.  Blue dye plants have no such reputation.  Woad and indigo are dark green and both require extensive processing to extract the blue bits.

Not so with this columbine.  When dried, it made a nice medium blue.  

 

This isn't to say one could dye with it.  Only it made a beautiful blue pigment that probably is not lightfast.  But if I need a natural bluey blue I know I have it.  I even made a second lake which produced a pale blue, perfect for sky.