Artfest Part One

What an amazing weekend I had at Artfest! I did the long way around to Port Townsend, and drove up from Olympia with Julie on Wednesday. We puttered around Port Townsend a bit, had lunch at Siren's and finally got registered and to House 15. Such fun visiting with our housemates and exchanging our house trades. And then going over to the cafeteria and doing the trading madness.

Day One class was Karen Michael, Earth Friendly Paint Making. She showed us how to make our own water color paints using non-toxic elements. You need the binder, pigment and preservative… plus a bit of water.Binders were methyl cellulose, gum Arabic and milk paint mixed with pigments and an essential oil (cloves, lavender…) as a preservative. She gave us a recipe for gesso, which I’ll try very soon since I’m almost out. And for a couple of glues.

My favorite as we were painting was the milk paint, I really liked the colors and how it flowed. They dried not quite the same color though. Interesting. I also really like the Gum Arabic, and when it dries in your palette (as with the metyl cellulose) it becomes a “cake” you can use again by re-wetting.

Karen has a book coming out in June, Green Guide for Artists, which I’m pre-ordering on Amazon. She is an excellent, laid back instructor… and very talented. I'll be taking more of her classes.

Here's some of the playing I did with the paints I mixed. These both need more work, this is as as far as I got during class. The collage bits were attached with methyl cellulose as glue.