Good resources

I've found an interesting website/shop called Natural Pigments that seems to be pretty useful.
I especially like their pigment info and their tools.
I've also stumbled across an online version of Thompson's The Practice of Tempera Painting. Handy.

Thesis thoughts

Been wrestling with what to write my essay on (it's a pleasant tussle so far, no worries there...). Alchemy is a vast ocean of a subject, and I like swimming in it but soon I'll need to start narrowing my focus so I can crank out a ten-page essay before the end of March. The essay is supposed to concentrate on material/technical aspects of whatever subject we choose. So right now I'm leaning towards working with the doctrine of signatures, or perhaps the element of fire, and how these were applied by artists and alchemists in 16th- and 17th-century Europe. Or maybe hylomorphism. Aww, see...there's just so much to work with!

Black is the new black?

A Belgian artist [Frederik De Wilde] has collaborated with Rice University to make a black 144 times darker than what we now know as black. Hmm. Here are links in Dutch and English relating to this news; there was something going on at Rice around this earlier, too: see this NPR story from 2008.

Alchemy

I'm doing the research for my writing project. The subject I've chosen is alchemy (surprise!). So far I've found some *very* interesting sources, including Gage's Colour and Culture, Bucklow's The Alchemy of Paint (my fave so far) and Elkins' What Painting Is. Funny, I ran into the last title nearly simultaneously with both my partner and Luuk, who's generously loaned me the copy he just picked up in the UK during winter break.

If anyone has any other suggestions for good reading on this subject, I'd love to hear them!

Tempera V: bont & blauw & borrellen ... (or, in other words: fur & blue & cocktails)

Well alrighty then, school's started up again. So this week's lesson was about painting...fur. We're still working with egg tempera. We had a variety of fake fur bits and the manky-looking stuffed squirrel that I've decided to name Hieronymus. A couple of my classmates used him as their model, and I just adore their excellent renderings of his...specialness. Here's a picture of him:

(he is rather cute, in a special way, I think!!!)

It was time to stock up our supplies of pigment dispersions (pastes), so several kind classmates made up some new batches -- the ultramarine was so pretty in the bright January sun, I had to take a picture of it.

After hours of focusing on fur, we let things get a bit blurry at our New Year's cocktail party. Long live the sprezzatura!

Finally, one of my classmates asked that I post all of our studies online, so here they are, with a couple of shots of the fur models/samples in between it all as well...