Thread: Staining carving with soil

Interesting , I suppose many stains are earth pigments anyway, still I'd imagined you would have needed a longer time to attain the colour.
His work looks to be of the highest quality BTW. , which only makes me consider the unusual staining method more seriously.
Thanks for that ,there'll be some scraps of wood getting buried in my garden tomorrow !
Mike

Paints such as Ochre, Umber and Sienna are earth pigments. The tones over those quality carvings are so very plausible.

A few months back, I enjoyed an "earth paints" workshop. We were instructed in preparation and shared results to do some painting as well.
I was impressed with the great range of colors we got = from a pale green and pale yellow across reds, browns, blacks to a rather gaudy purple!
We mixed our pigments with a gum arabic solution, like any other watercolors, and got on with landscape painting.

Burying carvings in soil should be very erratic results and the risk of fungal decomp contamination.

I have on many occasions used a brew of soil to age a board to better match an old piece for furniture repair (what is an old board but a dirty board). I mix up soil and water to make a wash apply allow to dry and sand to remove excess it comes up very well indeed and the range of colours is very wide.
Regards Rod.

would have liked to see the results of your work as thinking I may try using it on a female mallard

cheers

Essentially, we ground the dry soil and then mixed it with water, 3-4 liters and good big stir.
Then you pour off the murky water and let that settle for maybe a week!!!
That's the fine-ground pigment. The gum arabic solution you buy in a serious art supply store.
Our experimental stuff only settled over lunch, maybe 2-3 hrs altogether. It painted OK.
I was surprised how translucent it was but suppose it could have been diluted further almost like a stain/glaze.

your post has made me more determined to have a go at the idea thanks

That work is amazing but I think I'll stick with my dyes.

All soils are different though , locally we will find that the results will be different , wont we ?

I will try everything and expect some disasters

That's a good attitude to hold cobalt

The messiness alone would get to me. I'm so fussy about keeping my projects super clean that just the idea itself drives me nuts . Lol

Hey. I'm officially a senior member. When did that happen? Lol

i suppose your like me had a senior moment?

Originally Posted by cobalt32

i suppose your like me had a senior moment?

Yes . Not that I need a reason to have a senior moment
Now I feel justified having a senior moment. I mean., I'm labelled now. Lol.

Karrylynne Tarr was the artist-in-residence who led the earth painting workshop.
She had three (?) dozen 3-5 gal pails for stirring up dirts for paint pigments.

You see, the thing is, if/when you get a really good one, it doesn't go off, you can keep it. It's a mineral sort of thing.
You collect 5kg mud/dirt, you grind up and process 1 kg for 1-2 tbsp paint pigment it's no big deal.
If it's great, so be it. If not, hang onto the sack of dirt anyway.

The two parts which were key to me:

1. After grinding and grinding and grinding dry dirt and mixing with water, the key earth pigment would settle out of the so-called "dirty water"
over several days- week, she said. No time like that in the weekend workshop.

2. The artists' gum arabic solution from an art store was key to painting consistency like regular watercolors.