Pigment-making

We are excited to announce a pigment making workshop - focusing on transforming minerals and locally sourced materials - with artist, pigment maker and tutor, Polly Bennett. Come away with your own set of pigments, paints and ink and use your new environmentally-friendly skills in your existing art practice.

Polly will start the workshop by explaining foraging basics. Participants will then learn how to grind and levigate rock, collected from the UK, into pigment. You will have a go at making gouache and watercolour paint from pigment. We will also make oak gall ink together. After a break for lunch, there will be an opportunity to do some observational drawings or lettering with the paints and ink made. Participants will need to bring in 7 jam jars with lids and their preferred watercolour paper, nibs and paintbrushes, together with a selection of biological specimens or beloved objects to draw from. You will take home your own set of washed pigment, paints, ink and any drawings you make.

Polly Bennett is an environmental artist, pigment maker and alchemist exploring themes of identity and our relationship with the natural world through colour. As a pigment collector and maker, she founded POLBEN’s Pigment in 2020, transforming raw materials into sustainable artists’ pigments and inks. See Polly’s website here: www.pollybennett.com