Madder (Day 22) & Weld

Day 22
The madder was quite dry by today (I hadn't checked it in several days - it's probably been thoroughly dry now for some time, though) - so i geared up to go grind it. One cannot be too careful when it comes to dry pigments. Even for a pigment that isn't know to be toxic, it's not a great idea to start breathing pigment dust. (I have read, though, that madder is thought to be mildly toxic). so, on went the gloves and the dust mask. I would have worn eye protection too for good measure, except my lovable husband has lost them. I'll be replacing them shortly, as losing my sight ranks way up there on my list of fears - so anything I can do to protect my eyes is well worth doing in my book.


Below is a final picture of the dried madder on the filter papers. It has shrunk considerably. Interesting how much of that pigment muck was water, isn't it?


With gloved hands, I rubbed the dried pigment into my mortar. you can see it below, next to the now empty filter papers.

And here's a close up of what the pigment looks like, fresh from the filter papers - it's kind of chunky.


Here it is after the first grinding. Seems lighter than it was before the grinding, doesn't it?


My instructions recommended a second wet grinding, noting that you can get a finer powder this way. So I added a bit of water and ground it again. I did notice that it was significantly easier to grind once wet - and it certainly quit kicking up so much pigment dust. Once wet, I could also see the transparency of the color, which I imagine I'll also see once I mull it with linseed oil. My photo didn't really do the color justice - it was a more luminescent earthy orange than it seems in the picture. It also gave me a bit of an idea of how much oil paint I can expect to get out of this batch of pigment. Not too much by the look of it - but it should be enough for a small value study

If I can find a little wood panel, I'm also thinking about rubbing a bit into a the wood to see the effect of using it as a wood varnish (the recipe I used was from David Rubio, who was a violin maker, and used this lake to varnish his finished violins). As it turns out, I'm missing some information that would give me the lake usually used by painters. I've been reading about madder, and know enough to know that there are a number of colorants in the root, the two principal colorants being alizarin and purpurin. Alizarin is what I'm after for the traditional painter's madder lake. I've read of two ways of extracting it from the roots (either by fermentation, or treated with acid) - neither of which methods I have found sufficient information to actually do it yet.

I have, however, discovered something quite exciting. I found a blog titled Sunsikell last week, written by Louis Bipso, in which he writes about a variety of topics of interest to me. In fact, in his latest entry, he's described the pigment lake making process. It follows pretty closely to what I have done with the madder project - however he notes that madder requires more attention and processing to obtain a good color. I discovered his blog while I was sitting at work one day last week with nothing much to do (as usual these days) - and I spent a good part of the day reading through about the past six months of entries. In addition to writing about pigment sources, natural dyestuffs, and types of pigments - he also writes about traditional methods of using the materials - which is also of interest to me. He is the only other painter I have been in contact with to date (we've chat a bit in the comments section of his blog) who even cares about where the colors from - and he not only cares, he loves it at least as much as I do. He's also quite ahead of me in the quest to discover and create color. I'm sure my blog stalking will prove to be a valuable resource as I move forward with my pigment making. For now, I'm crossing my fingers for a post soon on what he knows about madder that I haven't been able to find yet. I'm also going to hunt through a couple of books in my studio and see if one of them can help.

Weld
Growing weld sounds like it should be easy enough - but I didn't want to wait until spring to plant it, and then next fall to experiment with it - so i ordered some dried weld. My supplier was kind enough to include some helpful instructions on the label. Looks like I have enough for 2 dye baths. As with the madder, I want to make pigment out of it first, but am hoping to dye some wool with the discarded dye as well. I should get a lovely, bright yellow out of it.


My weld is currently soaking in about a gallon of distilled water over night. I'll heat it tomorrow to get the dye. Making a lake from the weld should go a bit faster than the madder did. It will also help that I've been through the process once before, so some of it will be second nature this time around.


I've got wool on the stove as I type, in a tin mordant bath (it's nothing exciting to look at, and doesn't look any different than the other photos I've posted previously of mordant baths - looks like wool in a pot with hot water). I've read the tin mordant should produce a nice orange with the madder dye I've got. I'm hoping my saved dye is strong enough. I'll find out tomorrow. I'm going to let the wool cool over night, and I'll dye it tomorrow.