Starting with foraging ethics, you will together with Botanical Colors discuss how to identify dye sources and extract their color. You will then transmute those dyes into shelf-stable lake pigments, expanding their potential application to paints, crayons, and pastels. Natalie will focus on the invasive plants of the northeast US, but participants will learn to extrapolate our basic recipe to any dye plant. You’ll discuss the chemistry controlling vibrancy and opacity, and in Botanical Colors’ second session learn to turn our finished pigments into watercolors and pastels. The artist’s materials made from the boisterous plants around us root our craft to place, and locate beauty even within vilified but resilient local plants.
Join Botanical Colors for Invasive and Ruderal Local Color With Natalie Stopka. Did you know that color is all around you, even underfoot? Natalie will explore the pigment potential of these ruderal (a plant growing on waste ground or among refuse) and invasive plants to make lake pigments.
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Botanical Colors offers natural dyes and education to textile and fiber arts artisans around the world. We support regional farmers, organic farming, regenerative soil and are forever excited creating new plant-based colors out of our Seattle-based studio.