From Plant to Pigment: How to make your own vibrant inks, pastels and paints
a studio manual by Natalie Stopka
forthcoming from Skittledog Books in October, 2025
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The many plants that surround and sustain us are rich with color. With a little alchemical know-how, you can transform the brilliant hues of our botanical companions from liquid dye to granular pigment, supplying myriad artistic uses as paint, ink and pastel.
Today’s art suppliers are stocked with very refined and chemically pure colors. But for those of us seeking sustainability and ecological connection, they are very far removed from nature. Inspired by the history and craft of color-making, Natalie Stopka is an artist and educator known for her explorations of handmade, homegrown pigments. In From Plant to Pigment she invites us into her studio, sharing the ways she has divested her practice of non-renewable synthetics in favor of the craft of handmade, homegrown, local colour.
Natalie's colors stand out from plant dyes and inks because they are stabilized in lake pigment form. Explicating the fundamental techniques and chemistry of lake pigments, this book extends the applications of natural dye colors into expanded artistic media. A manual full of recipes for artists to concoct their own pigments, paints, and pastels from botanical sources, sections include:
Botanical sources: cultivating, foraging, harvesting and storing dye plants
The studio larder: essential equipment and ingredients
Lake pigments: including Natalie’s master lake pigment recipe
Other plant pigments: charcoal and indigo
Artists’ materials: using your botanical pigments to make an array of artists’ materials
