Green is such a flirty colour! It will offer just a hint of itself in natural pigments; really just enough to get the desperate artist feeling excited. But when that same artist tries to share the tantalizing bit of terre-verte pigment with another, it seems that green quickly covers herself up—rather than be publicly observed—and leaves only an unexciting shade of grey (leaving the artist to wonder if his fantasies simply ran away with him!).
If forced to reveal more of herself, green moves from flirt to fatal-attraction. No colour has killed more people than green: Bright green pigments tend to have a truly toxic personality. A bright sexy green killed Napoleon in his prison cell on Saint Helena’s island, and in the Victorian era the same colour killed hundreds of children in their newly wallpapered nurseries. Even moving beyond the realm of pigments, in alcoholic form it was the green-fairy which drove an entire generation of artists, writers and actors to insanity.
I think green is therefore both the most lively and deadly of colours, maybe because it’s nature is to always amplify itself. The lively green of spring leaves freshly greets both the eye and nose—the more you draw in the more alive you’ll feel—but if you intensify a dead rock’s green, it will toxically repay the attention.
A few years ago I fell in love with a bright green, but the encounter left me very ill. Today I satisfy myself with the tease of earth greens; abandoning any vamper temptation.
- St. Barbara's basecoat February 4, 2010
This week I've begun putting down paint for the first icon of St. Barbara for my Transart project. This icon is being created from the annabergite I collected during my trip to Cobalt, Ontario. It's also the same pigment I used during my attempt at...
- Cobalt Pigment Prepared January 22, 2010
To prepare for my first attempt in painting an icon of Saint Barbara I've ground the different hues I'll be using (and a couple of mixtures, too). In the end, an entire shelf has been filled. It feels good to have this work done, but as I look at ...
- Cobalt: Minerals May 27, 2009
So, what did we find in Cobalt? Here's a list of the minerals for those interested: Safflorite (cobalt): Collecting cobalt in Cobalt has a nice symmetry in my mind. Almost every mine site we visited offered a rock or two of this mineral. All told...
- Sebright: Different Greens June 30, 2008
While the green earth I collected from Sebright was a nice colour once ground, I have been curious what effect a couple of different experiments might have upon it. What you see in the above photograph is the two extremes I ended up with. The colour of...
- Sebright: Green June 25, 2008
With the arrangements made, Reiner, Maggie and I headed up to the other side of Orillia to visit the Attia Quarry in Rama Township. Eid Attia, the owner, had mentioned that we would need to go to the new quarry if we hoped to find some of the, "green s...
- Sebright: Glauconite June 24, 2008
The final colour of my pallet that was still eluding me had been green. My only consolation in this frustration is that it has been is shared by every artist going back hundreds of years. There just aren't many naturally green pigment sources out there...
- Nova Scotia Pigments April 10, 2007
It has been 9 months since my brother, Aaron, and I spent the week collecting pigment/rock samples from old mines in Nova Scotia and the verdict is in as to which of these samples are usable. While I am excited about these colours, not all of them were...
- Nova Scotia: Finding Colour October 29, 2006
While the gross work of pounding the pigment into colour was done, there still remained the work of finely grinding them. This work was done during a demonstration at the Homer Watson Gallery. When grinding with a glass muller, one can't help but no...
- Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia August 21, 2006
The site of the old Dunbrack Mine caught our interest because the minerals found at the site included two rarities of particular interest: Azurite and Malachite. A local man who we met at the Nova Scotia Gem & Mineral Show, Doug, was kind enoug...
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