I didn't know that Art Guerra, founder of Guerra Paint and Pigment in New York, is also an artist. I've used his pigment dispersions straight out of the bottle for woodblock ever since I started making prints. Check out this Two Coats of Paint blog post about Art's current show at Sugar gallery in Brooklyn.
5 comments:
Now if you were buying a basic set of dry pigments for printmaking. Which colors would you get? I've read David Bulls list of colors but the names are all different.
Hi Hannah,
I've never used powdered pigments. My basic Guerra palette is burnt sienna, ultramarine blue, yellow oxide, red oxide, burnt umber, white and sumi-black. At a recent workshop I taught, though, I discovered that most of the students found my palette too muted and wanted brighter colors -- maybe hansa yellow instead of yellow oxide, and a bright red instead of the red oxide. I think it boils down to personal preference. David Bull's palette is probably the traditional Japanese palette plus his own additions. Sorry I can't be more definitive about it.
Thank you that's plenty of info! The problem with David Bull's was that he gets his in Japan and it seems like availability is a bit different over here.
Do you use a binder for the deispersions? If not, the disperse pigment will eventually rub off.
Hi Alex. Amazingly the dispersions don't rub off when used for Japanese style woodblock prints. A binder made of rice starch is used, but I'm not sure that the rice paste is the real reason the pigments don't rub off. Rather, I think it's because the force of the baren (used to hand print from the inked block) pushes the pigments into the fibers of the paper, essentially "dying" the paper rather than sitting on top of the paper. It seems quite permanent once it's dry.
Thanks for commenting.
Post a Comment