First few pigments results.

I am very excited about our first four pigment results. The colours have a very classical atmospehere and give us a really good defined earthy palette. The earth colours turned out to be very transparent (with an opacity of about 50% ). The chromium green in the palette is an accidental discovery. It is a synthetic pigment. I've burned some Ammonium Dicromate (care - toxic) and got a really interesting dark ash/oxide forming. I've decided to do some more research on the green ash. The formula look as follow: (NH4)2Cr2O7 > N2 + 4H2O + Cr2O3. The Cr2O3 that forms is the oxide and is known as Chromium green paint when mixed with linseed oil. 

Our almost complete Cape adventure colour palette.

The Copper Sulphate was delivered yesterday and will be used to create our blue (Egiptian blue).  Appart from the blue we plan to add two more colours. The colours that we are going to make is "Lamp black" (that I've handled in a previous post) and Flake/Lead white (a toxic but very good paint to paint with).

The red and yellows were made by grinding the rocks that we have collected in a Mortar & Pestle. Some of the rock powder were cleaned and filtered in water, but no difference in terms of colour can be seen. We've added the linseed oil to the pigment and then even further grinded using a muller.

The rock is grinded very fine using this ceramic mortar & pestle.