The last USK meeting of the year was this past Sunday. It was cold, but dry. I lasted about 1 hour before my fingers turned into icicles. I chose to sketch a little flower shop.

The corollary of my last exploration is that now I am using ultramarin blue anywhere and everywhere. I suppose one  could say this is the "blue period". Maybe after I am dead, somebody will stumble upon these records lost in the electronic world and think that indeed a blue period begun. Wouldn't that be fun!

More terre-a-terre, I used a photo from my vacation to sketch the same scene multiple times. Three times to be exact. One using two opposite colors, then directly to brush using Mona's UB and finally continuous pen line. 

I used the paint that dried up on the porcelain plate used for mixing. I am curious to see if the mixed paint looks any different. While I like the color, I think that the paint is not transparent enough. I need to do more research before the next attempt to make paint. But that won't be any time soon ...

That's right - making one's own paint from dry pigments like in the good old times. Kama Pigments  sells dry pigments and all the ingredients to make any kind of paint. Of course I had to try! My ultramarin is running low so I bought a jar of dry pigment and went to work. 

I also bought an empty tube to store the mixed paint in, but the store was out of watercolor tubes. I bought the smallest oil tube instead. 

As I was started to mix the paint, I had an epiphany. I was going to mix all the dry pigment. make a ton of paint and fill in the oil paint tube! Folks, trust me! This is the wrong epiphany to have! 

If you try this at home please, please, please - do a small amount at a time!

I ended up with  a huge mess, most likely the paint does not have enough binder. I could not mash the pigment properly. I wasted a lot of color. On the other hand, the process done properly does not seem all that complicated and it can represent a significant saving for somebody who uses a lot of paint, A jar of dry pigment was less than 6$ for 4oz. A tube of Daniel Smith is around 12$.

I suspect I will try this again until I figure out how to do it properly. But for now I have to figure out how to use the excessive amount of paint I made.  

I'd love to hear from you. Did you ever try to make your own paint? What happened?

I experimented with making my own multi-purpose cream. I wanted something to use for my hands - which dry out terribly in the winter - face and body. There are many recipes out there of course. I decided on a combination of aloe vera butter, coconut oil, baobab oil and sea blackthorn oil. I bought the baobab oil for other purposes, but I did not use it so I added it to the mix. Sea blackthorn is excellent for the skin.

The process is super simple and it takes no more than 5 min. Put all ingredients in a metal or glass bowl. Add beeswax. The amount depends on how liquid you want your cream to be. My mix was:

• 1/4 cup aloe vera butter
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/4 cup baobab oil and sea blackthorn oil 
• 1/4 cup beeswax

Usually vit. E is added as a preservative, but I did not have any. hopefully I will use the cream fast enough so it won't matter.

Melt all the ingredients in a double boiler. Pour in  containers. Let cool down. That's all folks. Is that easy!

I want to get used to my new palette. Well, my new old palette as most colors remained. Anyhow, practice makes perfect, right? So I opened the fridge to see what looks appealing. I found a pear, an apple and a very old lemon. 

I fond the washes a bit stiff, so I made another sketch with the intention to loosen up the paint application. Between take 1 and 2, I ate one of the models so I replaced it with a gourd ...I think I like the second one better. What do you think?