A Colour A Day: Week 25. 7th-13th September

Jo Volley writes…

A method for making shell gold

Grind either skewings or leaf gold with a small amount of clear honey into a paste using a muller and slab. Work the muller slowly in a figure of eight until you have the mixture spread out thinly on the slab, gather up and begin grinding again. Continue this process for approx. 15 minutes or until you have broken down the gold into fine particles. Place the mixture into a glass and fill with hot water to flush out the honey.

When the gold has settled to the bottom of the glass decant the water.
Repeat approx. 5 or 6 times until all the honey is removed. De-ionised or distilled water is recommended for the last 2 stages. Allow the gold pigment to dry. Bind with gum Arabic and store the gold paint in a shell.

All pigments are bound in gum Arabic on W&N watercolour paper.

First column left to right: Four gold pigments gifted by the artist, Lisa Milroy, collected on her travels in China.

Second column top to bottom:
Schmincke pale gold
Jo Volley’s shell gold
Schmincke rich pale gold

A Colour A Day: Week 24. 31st August – 6th September

Jo Volley writes…

This week we pay homage to the maillot jaune of the Tour de France with seven historic yellow pigments and celebrate Adam Yates, English cyclist, wearing it for the first time. The maillot jaune was adopted in 1919 by Henri Desgrange, director of the tour, to distinguish the leader of the race more easily within the peloton. Desgrange was also editor of the sports paper L’Auto which funded the tour and printed on yellow paper. To quote Jens Voigt, who wore the maillot jaune for a day during the 2001 tour, ‘Yellow is a beautiful colour, no?’
All pigments are bound in gum Arabic on W&N watercolour paper and read from left to right:

Gamboge

Lead tin yellow

Orpiment

Alizarin yellow

Naples yellow

Indian yellow

Aureolin

In memory of Tommy Simpson, the first British cyclist to wear the yellow jersey.
30 November 1937, Haswell – 30 July 1967, Mount Ventoux.

A Colour A Day Week 23. 24th August – 30th August.

Jo Volley writes…

This week we celebrate Goethe’s 271st birthday, 28th August, with earth pigments from Cyprus collected and processed by Ruth Siddall who says of them …

‘Cyprus is an island long associated with the production of pigments. These are by-products of the copper mining that has been active since the Bronze Age when Cyprus was the main supplier of copper ingots in the eastern Mediterranean region. But it was not copper-based pigments that were in abundance, it was the iron and manganese-rich ochres and umbers which were typical of Cyprus as well as the celadonite-rich green earth deposits. The Cypriot umber is a true umber in the geological sense having formed at a mid-ocean ridge plate tectonic boundary. In fact this is the environment of deposition of all of Cyprus’s ores and pigments. They originally formed in deep ocean waters, superheated by volcanic activity and then this slab of oceanic rock, ores and all, was emplaced onto the Eurasian continent during the construction of the Alpine mountain chain. The ochres formed by the weathering of the ores both before and after this emplacement onto dry land. Such a geological environment is uncommon, and Cyprus is by far the biggest example of these processes on Earth. A unique island for pigment formation.’

All pigments are bound in gum Arabic on W&N watercolour paper and read;

Left hand column from top to bottom:
Yellow Ochre, Sia Mine, Cyprus
Jarosite Yellow Ochre, Sia Mine, Cyprus
Burnt Umber, Margi, Cyprus

Middle column:
Red Ochre, Sia Mine, Cyprus

Right hand column from top to bottom:
Raw Umber, Margi, Cyprus
Terra Verte, Cyprus
Brown Ochre, Sia Mine, Cyprus

A Colour A Day Week 22. 17th-23rd August

Jo Volley writes…In JL Carr’s novel A Month in the Country the protagonist Tom Birkin returning from the First World War is redeployed as a wall painting conservator. He spends the summer uncovering a large medieval wall painting in a country church and along with it rediscovers a sense of faith in the future. As the painting’s image is revealed and through the unknown artist’s use and choice of colours, Tom begins to appreciate and understand the man.

‘I was working up the 3 brothers (see Luke 16), blissfully heedless of the judgement to come…The second magnate’s cloak was a splendid garment – red outside and green lining. A very good red, the best in fact, no expense spared, sinoper haematite that is, not to be confused with what some fatheads call sinoper which, as often as not, is red earth, the stuff they used to bring in by the shipload from Pontus Euxinus (and don’t ask me where that was). That’s the red which darkens almost as soon as you turn your back on it: it survives and that’s all that can be said for it. In fact, on damp walls, it’s all that does survive. Well, back to this chap’s cloak. It was resin-based and that doesn’t ooze out, by the gallon; they found a scallop-shell with caked deposit amongst the rubble in the Gifford Chantry at Boyton.’

‘Mr Birkin…Mr Birkin…is it an oil painting or a water colour or what is it for goodness sake?’ ’It’s all sorts of things, Mrs Keach. Item – blew bysse at 4s 4d. the pound, item – one sack of verdigris at 12d. a pound, item – red ochre, 3 pounds a penny, item – 3 pecks of wheat flour…. I suppose you could lump it all as tempera. And let’s not forget the wall itself – down in the sinful south, plastered with chalk bound with parish offerings of skimmed milk; up here, slaked limestone putty damped just enough to stiffen. That’s about what it is.’ …Spaynishe white,  Baghdad indigo, Cornish malachite…

But for me, the exciting thing was more than this. Here I was, face to face with a nameless painter reaching from the dark to show me what he could do, saying to me as clear as my words, ‘If any part of me survives from time’s corruption, let it be this. For this was the sort of man I was.’

Each pigment is bound in gum Arabic on W&N watercolour paper and reads from left to right:

Malachite
Verdigris
Chalk
Haematite
Red ochre
Chalk
Indigo
Blue bice

A Colour A Day Week 21. 10th-16th August

Jo Volley writes….

Extracts from Matisse on Art Jack D Flam 1973. On the occasion of an exhibition at the Gallery Maeght, December 1949 the title of which was Black is a Colour. Henri Matisse’s remarks were recorded by M. Maeght.

Before, when I didn’t know what to put down, I put down black. Black is a force: I depend on black to simplify the construction. Now I have given up all blacks*The use of black as a colour in the same way as the other colours – yellow, blue or red – is not a new thing. The Orientals made use of black as a colour, notably the Japanese in their prints. Closer to us, I recall a painting by Manet in which the velvet jacket of a young man with a straw hat is painted in a blunt and lucid black. In the portrait of Zacharie Astruc by Manet, a new velvet jacket is also expressed by a blunt luminous black. Doesn’t my painting of the Marocains use a grand black which is as luminous as the other colours in the painting? Like all evolution, that of black in painting has been made in jumps. But since the Impressionists it seems to have made continuous progress, taking a more and more important part in colour orchestration, comparable to that of the double-bass as a solo instrument. 

*Matisse does not mean he has given up the use of black, but that he no longer used it merely for linear construction as in his earlier works. Actually, at this time Matisse was making a use of black as a colour instead of an element of linear construction.

From left to right

1. Jet – W&N Designers gouache
2. Perylene – W&N Designers gouache
3. Lamp – W&N Designers gouache
4. Blue Black – W&N Calligraphy ink
5. Mars – W&N Designers gouache
6. Ivory – W&N Designers gouache
7. Noir Intense – Lefranc Bourgeois Linel gouache

A Colour A Day – Week 20. 3rd – 9th August

Jo Volley writes…
This week’s colours are more earths, gifted by Steven Patterson, Chief Executive Officer, Derivan, Australian artist materials manufacturer, from their Matisse Structure Origins Range. To accompany them please listen to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde;

The earth breathes, in full rest and sleep.
All longing now becomes a dream.

Each colour is painted out in 3 layers on W&N watercolour paper and read from left to right:

1. Armenian Gugark Cherry
2. Morrocan Yellow Oxide
3. Armenian Lori Red Light
4. Armenian Tavush Trans Green
5. Armenian Lori Violet Light
6. Armenian Kotayk Ochre
7. Armenian Bole

A Colour A Day – Week 19.  27th July-2nd August

Jo Volley writes…..

This week we celebrate the last seven FA Cup finals using the predominant colour worn by the winning team on the day. The FA Cup is the world’s oldest football competition, the first games played in the autumn of 1871, the same year as the Slade School was established. Arsenal have won the cup a record 14 times. 🏆

Each colour can be found in the Liquitex Soft Body Acrylic range and is on W&N watercolour paper.

A Colour A Day: Week, 15. 29th June – 5th July

Jo Volley writes…….

In spring 2017, Nisar Hossain, Dean of the Fine Art Faculty, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Artist and specialist on Contemporary Painting and Folk Painting of Bangladesh, led a contemporary installation  workshop at the Slade based on traditional Folk Art of Bangladesh.  He also gave  a public lecture at the Whitechapel Gallery The heritage of ritualistic folk painting and the traditional painter communities of Bangladesh as part of the Inspire exchange project between the Slade School of Fine Art and the University of Dhaka Faculty of Fine Art, Bangladesh funded by the British Council.

Links to various workshops throughout the Inspire project

Here are 7 of the colours Nisar generously donated to the Material Research Project pigment library, written in Bangla, as he gave me. Each are bound in gum Arabic on W&N watercolour paper and read from left to right.

1. Hāra pathar
2. Haritāl
3. Sindura
4. Bhusha kali
5. Hingula
6. Elamati
7. Nīl