December 30th, 2015

This is the result of yesterday's experiment with handmade pastels from natural earth. I was pleasantly surprised that they did not crumble. The color is not strong and they do seem quit hard. So I tried another batch with more binder to see what the difference will be. I had some other ochre pigments that I also made. I had all of my bits (odds and ends) of pastels I saved. It was an hour of carpal tunnel grinding them down with drywall putty knife. Little things please me. Like the color strings that happened while grinding them down. Made a very nice brown out of it all. I tried with 2 different binding solutions. Hope they are usable!