Painting with Nature
A section of the Bayeux Tapestry depicting Hailey’s Comet in the night sky.
It all began with a tapestry from 1066. The Bayeux Tapestry actually. This artifact is a marvel of creativity and artistic skill, created in the middle ages and can still be enjoyed today! When I came to know it, I had to find out how this was made. Everything from growing the flax, to dying the wool, the copper alloy needles they used, and the actual stitch used, yes, an actual stitch called the Bayeux Stitch.
I have done some teaching on this amazing primary source and artifact and developed an art lesson and sewing lesson around this subject. When I began to research I found the wonderful world of natural dyes and pigments. I wondered if I could create some pigments to used in one of my art classes and set about in my kitchen ordering plant and root powders and mixing them. To my great delight, I was able to create several organic colors just by using plant powders!
Fast forward to the present, once again I found myself creating homemade paint using pigment from fruit. I was creating a lesson for Little Learners Art and Literature. Here again, Mother Nature didn’t disappoint! I made my “paint” using 3 different recipes and all were better than I had hoped for. The images below are the result, a monochromatic painting of blueberries, using only my “paint” and water! One paint color and different intensities give shadow and contrast to my painting. You can see a slight variation of color on the swatches as I used a different recipe for each..If you are interested in the lesson sign up for Little Learners Art and Literature HERE.
I have used other materials from the earth to paint with too. I did a sunflower painting years ago, using other plants, beets, carrot seed, madder root, spirulina powder (when I find it I will post it here but alas you will just have to trust me for now). The color swatches from these are similar with different densities or coats of the paint created different hues from the same color. This was a wonderful color study and I would recommend it to everyone nature lover or not. Give it a try!
