Gathering Earth Pigments From Rocks And Clay To Create Handmade Paints

It might sound a bit funny but I collect rocks. Not just rocks but shells, leaves and flowers that I dry from my travels and wandering. I love them, store them in prized glass cases, handmade boxes or if they’re large enough, display them on shelves. You see, each tells a story for me and is a reminder of various adventures and discoveries.

You may ask why I’m telling you this and I know it’s a bit quirky but my rocks led me to a discovery a while back that I wanted to let you know about.

You see I discovered that a number of the rocks I had collected from far and wide could be made into paint. I have to say that this inspired me and I needed to know more.

Fortunately there are resources to find out all about it and I leaned heavily on research at this point. I needed to know how it is done, what tools are needed and could you really make paint from earth pigments yourself or was it some mysterious process that had lots of secret steps that would take years to unravel.

The answer, to my delight, is that it is completely doable with very few tools and not too much elbow grease. Well, come to think of it, there is quite a lot of elbow grease involved. 

Armed with the mantra, “ It's All about the Process” I set out to learn the inner workings of how to forage for rocks and clay that can be made into earth pigments. And from there how to make those earth pigments into paints.

Given time and space I’d be grinding and measuring and mixing my days away with my precious rocks. But I think my family might move me to parts unknown if I get to heavily into this passion. In fact they now look at me and say, “ are you keeping those rocks?” To which I reply, “ These aren’t just any rocks. These are pigment rocks”. It’s usually a standoff but I’m not willing to give up too much ground.

I’m planning to continue my journey with earth pigments and I’ll  be sure to keep you posted. I may create a course to show you the ins and outs of how it’s all done.And I’ll leave you with a thought that inspires me to use them when I can and to gather them from everywhere I can along my journey.

It’s an amazing feeling when you create a painting using earth pigments that come from the very rocks and soil that make up the landscape you are creating. I can’t imagine a more inspiring feeling.