Upcoming Learning Opportunities
A Handmade Palette: Natural & Historical Watercolors
Botanical Colors
Seattle, Washington
July 10-13, 2025
Where does color come from? It’s a story of rocks and minerals, plants and insects, and artisan ingenuity in the service of chronic chromaphilia! In this workshop we’ll delve into the history, chemistry, and hands-on practice of pigments and paint-making. Together we’ll concoct a palette of 12 handmade watercolors for participants to take home in a trusty travel paintbox. These are inspired by pre-industrial artists’ recipes from the 14-17th century. Much of our focus will be on the glorious shades of botanical colors: lake pigments and Maya blue made from scratch. We’ll also process earth pigments and charcoal, before mixing natural paint medium and mulling our pigments into paints. Along the way, we’ll also mull over the socio-cultural and ecological entanglements of color, with stories from the artist’s studio, monastic scriptorium, and alchemist’s laboratory. Participants will leave with a paintbox of 12 watercolors, a sketchbook of recipes and swatches, and the knowledge to continue expanding their palette with thoughtfully foraged and homemade pigments. Every shade in our paintbox tells a story through its rich, characterful, handmade color.
Skills & Techniques
How to extract, precipitate, and wash lake pigments
Historically-inspired recipes for 5 different lake pigments, sap green & Maya blue
How to make natural watercolor medium
Making watercolors: pigment grinding & paint mulling
Best practices for lightfastness
Riveting true tales from the history of art and chemistry!
Botanical Pigments for Paint, Ink, and Pastels
Sanborn Mills Farm
Loudon, New Hampshire
August 13-17, 2025
Artwork is made manifest with material choices. Join Natalie Stopka for a five-day exploration of beautiful and sustainable botanical pigments from our dye garden. These rich and subtle colors require thoughtful gathering and careful processing, rooting our practice in conversation with the natural world. Starting with a harvesting excursion, we’ll discuss how to grow, process, and store dye sources. We’ll then extract those dye colors and transmute them into shelf-stable lake pigments and indigo powder. We’ll discuss the chemistry controlling vibrancy and opacity and learn to adapt our basic recipe to participants’ local home garden plants (and weeds!). The ink, pastels, and hand-mulled watercolors we create will color gestural botanical ‘portraits’ of our plant collaborators. Participants will leave with 5+ pigments and 3+ watercolors, inks, and pastels to fold into their own studio practice, as well as the technical know-how to make their own botanical pigments and natural artists’ materials. No previous experience is required.
Skills and Techniques:
Ethical foraging guidelines, harvesting, and storage of dye plants
How to extract, precipitate, and wash lake pigments
Chemistry for artists: the basic chemical underpinnings of lake and indigo pigments
Mordant and alkali choices to control lightfastness, vibrancy, and opacity
Fermentation extraction of indigo pigment for Maya blue
How to make watercolor paints, pigmented writing inks, and pastel sticks for works on paper
Riveting stories from the history and artistry of pigment manufacture! From pre-Columbian ritual, through the medieval scriptorium and early modern alchemist’s laboratory, up to the present day
Natural Dyes from Garden Plants
Oak Spring Garden Foundation
Upperville, VA
August 18-22, 2025
Delve into the rich and subtle colors of natural dyes from garden plants. This short course is a special opportunity to work with plants grown on-site at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation's Biocultural Conservation Farm. Connecting the heritage of textile artisanry to sustainable studio practice, together we’ll:
Harvest fresh dye plants
Learn the best practices of fiber preparation for both vegetable and animal fibers
Extract and apply color to a rainbow of swatches
Demystify mordants and address the all-important question of longevity
Create an indigo vat for celestial blue
We’ll discuss the home cultivation of dye plants, dye studio set-up, safety considerations, and explore the colorful history of natural dyes. All fibers and dyes will be provided for a mini swatch library. Participants are welcome to bring one additional pre-washed skein or yard of natural fiber for a personal project (up to 100g). Students are also asked to bring their preferred gardening gloves and plant shears, and wear clothing that can get messy. Apply by May 12.
Objectives
Introduce participants to dye-bearing plant varieties and their cultivation
Deepen participants’ connections to the plant world and wonders of plant chemistry
Provide a solid technical foundation, and a little light chemistry, as a springboard to future projects
Offer inspiration and conceptual connectivity from the cultural heritage of dyeing, one of humankind’s longstanding artistic collaborations with plants
Contact Natalie with queries about remote private instruction on intermediate and advanced topics.