Busy bumblebee digging a nest hole in the ground under the moth trap shelter! I guess because it's shaded there, maybe the soil isn't so baked hard. 🐝

Had the luxury of a nice few hours at this today. If it looks like slow going, it is! & That's why I use watercolour so often under pencils to speed things up. But I'm loving being able to do all these layers in pencil, a real joy. 😌 Also started a bit of the subtractive shading on the faded leaves

Having finally wrestled a leaf I don't hate out of the test sheet, I'm starting to add the next layers of shading on the leaves in the main drawing. (I know, it's all a bit 'draw the rest of the fucking owl'... But it's mostly lotsa building up layers from here, until we get to the fine details)

This looks like it's getting there! Given the heatwave humidity is back, I'm kinda thinking of putting it in a dry box for a bit tho... Gotta be properly dry before you grind up pigments or things go a bit weird.

Once again someone has bought these colours together in my store, & gahdammit, I'm gonna have to build a set around them because... (gestures wildly in the general direvtion)

Anyway that was a bit depressing, have a moth to make up for it! 🦋💖

Goldenrod lake pigment is done washing & out to dry! Looking good too 😁

The cabbage dye is also smelly, so again I did the steeping outside. But it's not as stinky as the goldenrod. It just smells like, y'know... Cooked cabbage. The resulting pigment is bright blue...

So that's where we're at. The last wash of the goldenrod is running through, meanwhile I've made some blue lake pigment from red cabbage. Apart from being a nice blue to play with, cabbage is cheap & easy to use for a workshop/practice/etc

I did the 1st filter & wash outside. The pigment itself isn't stinky, so I brought it in after that to avoid bugs drowning in there! It's a chartreuse yellow 💛 I've only dyed paper, but I know goldenrod is also used to dye fabric. Not sure at what stage you'd wanna bring wool etc inside...

I put the fresh flowers in boiling water, put them outside immediately, covered & left them to steep overnight. (You could also dry flowers & use later tho.) Next morning the liquid was greenish yellow. Filtered it, then laked with 5g alum, & 2.75g soda ash (a lil bit extra cos the dye is acidic)…

Early goldenrod flower heads look like this - multiple sprays of tiny frothy yellow flowers. It's easy to pick off a few leaving the flowerheads otherwise intact for the bugs. I used 2 decent handfuls to try this pigment out. Gotta note - this is dye is stinky, so I did steeping & laking outside…

It's Sunday & therefore time for pigment shitposting! This weekend's shenanigans: goldenrod lake pigment. I'm using early goldenrod (Solidago gigantea) It's a tall wildflower & dye plant that I have in the moth garden. Hoverflies seem to like it alot. Also it's v resilient in this weather...

Forbidden jam and forbidden milkshake drying out nicely! (Now I just need less heatwave so I can mull all this into paint 😭) The rose madder lake is still very pale, so I have another bigger batch of madder fermenting, & will try again with more roots to alum.

It hasn't rained here since 30th June. The last significant rain was 11th June. There's no rain in the forecast for the next 7 days. I live in the UK. Wildlife here, esp plants, aren't really used to this. (Neither are humans TBH.) So here are some things I'm trying to do…

It's all part of the fun! Artists like Bernard and Larkin are really good at throwing people off the trail of what they've drawn. I mostly just see where my brain takes me. This is from 2017, between me & Domenico in Italy. I did the top ½. I'm still drawing on the ½ they sent me, which is v large.

Folks who play the EC game often try to mislead each other - drawing the strip that will be visible on their half to look like something other than what's really there. Bernard assumed I'd done this - & so drew normal beetles, assuming I'd drawn something wacky that was pretending to be beetles! 😂

The first pic shows a half (by surface area) that I sent to Bernard, someone I'd collaborated with before. We know how each other draw. Sometime between 2012-4, IDK I covered this piece up except for a 1cm strip around the edge of the dirt ball, & another 1cm strip at the top. Mailed it to Bernard…

OMFGs the arbitrary insertion of yoga suggestions drives me up the bastardtittyfucking wall

I still have 2 EC exchanges going on that started in 2013, now I think about it. Both artists are in Italy. We're not all in touch anymore. But the internet being what it is, I'm sure we'll find each other when we've finished our drawings! Here's another one between me & ChaosKatie on dA from 2012.

It's the style of EC where someone draws half a picture, covers up all but a small strip, and the other person completes the drawing from just that strip. Then unwraps it. In this one, Luca sent me their ½ covered with card, except for a small strip showing a bit of the central face & power button…

This is the test sheet. Everytime I draw plants or fungi or lichens, I have to spend some time drawing them badly, before my hands/brain will remember how to draw them well. Ugh. 🤦 But this does illustrate why I have test sheets int 1st place. Am starting to regret making this one ½ size, TBH...

Let's fucken gooo, OMFGs look at that temp! So there's a few more thin layers of shading happened, but they're not particularly visible at this stage, more there for blending. The test drawing is starting to look like a portrait kept in the main drawing's attic tho, which is generally a good sign…

Forbidden strawberry jam/madder red/alizarine is done filtering. It's so red it upsets the camera, does this make it the maddest, @birdcmp.bsky.social ?

Rose madder part 2 is a stronger colour. & looks less like it might want to ooze over & digest you as a snack.

Forbidden milkshake/rose madder lake part 1 has become forbidden, uhh... Well... Whatever this is.

I've been doing bits & pieces of pigment stuff the past few weeks but it's been so hot I just haven't had the spoons to post as well as make. But we've got cooler days coming up! So I'm shop-shipping tomorrow, then drawing & paint-making as much as humanly possible this week til the heat is back!

There's plenty enough recipes for getting alizarine by fermenting/digesting madder root. But the rose madder lake (AKA forbidden milkshake) recipe is from 'The Natural Pigment Handbook' by Lucy Mayes of London Pigment fame. Got my copy 2nd hand.

Me: how am I getting through this bag of aluminium sulphate so fast?? Also me: (does 4 rounds of laking in one day) So I also laked the fermentation liquid to get a pinkish brown pigment, & did another run of rose madder lake...

Then I made rose madder lake by pouring alum and then soda ash solutions through some of the spent roots to extract purpurin. This is the first time I've tried this, I used about ¼ of the roots, and it's very pale. So I will use more roots to the same alum for the next try…