Project on indefinite hiatus

Hey there,

This art project is on hiatus.  I certainly didn't finish the project within my self imposed deadline.  I did, however, come up with some very interesting techniques for making my own paint. 

I'm now working on a new painting style (for me) called Gravity Painting.  You can check out the work on this blog:

Gravity Painting

Blue Crush

A while ago, I crushed some of my Azurite. As I mentioned in a previous post, when I tried doing using the tried and true slurry technique, it made bubbles and a lot floated on top, similar to flour being poorly mixed with water. I let the pigment settle & water evaporate. As you can see in the photos, the slurry technique doesn't seem to be working well with water. I could try alcohol because it has a lower surface tension. The only problem is that even if it works better, I really don't want to make rubbing alcohol from scratch! I think I'd need a distillery license for that. So, maybe I need to try the soap technique.

Ochre Refinement Part II

Over the weekend, the ochre finally dried again, and I had a chance to scratch away the last of the rough particles.



Drying. Still moist, but cracks have formed. Ever notice how mud cracks are always 3 lines at an intersection? Never 4 or 5? There's a reason for it (path of least resistance, conservation of energy, something like that) , but I don't know the details. Have them? Tell me!



Here, a couple of the pieces are flipped to show the sandy bottom. This part was scratched off with a putty knife, leaving only the finer pigment particles.


An example of the raw dirt & the dirt after it's been refined via a slurry twice.


Here is a disappointing image: When mixed with walnut oil, it is very close to the normal umber that I got from my parent's regular soil (the kind that doesn't require heavy digging to get to it). It's a tiny bit lighter and more yellow, but not nearly as much so as when it is in powder form.


There's a bigger difference between it & the burnt umber though :)

I'm going to try using this pigment in a tempra (egg whites) medium and see how it looks when it dries next. If that doesn't work, then I question it if will be worth using it along with the other two tones. It's just not yellow enough like this, and not worth digging deep to get to it :(

Ochre Refinement

I'm going to go out on a limb & call this stuff ochre. It's dirt, and it's yellowish. Close enough for me right now. It also drys my hands out much like Burning Man Playa dust, so I wonder if it is an alkaline... I might test that out with vinegar to see if it bubbles. If so, maybe I should neutralize it before using it on a painting.

I got tired of waiting for the slurry to dry, so I scooped out the good stuff with a putty knife & spread it on paper towels so it would dry faster. I figured this would be OK, because I was planning on doing two slurrys to get the best of the best.

When it's wet, it gets really dark and brownish. The brown piece between the putt knife & the dried ochre is what a moment prior was dry ochre, but sucked up some moisture from the wet ochre on the left. This makes me think it's not going to mix with walnut oil well. I'm guessing it will work better in egg yolk. I'll have to try them out side by side and see what happens.



On the left is the silt that I scooped out & on the right is all the sand & coarse dirt. I'd guess the proportion is about 1/8 silt.



Before crushing



After



This much pigment came from about 1/4 pound of dirt. I then took all of this, and mixed it in water again (not pictured). I was surprised to see a fair amount of sand separate out to the bottom! I'll update with final pigment & tests in a few more days. It will have to dry (not get scooped out) this time so I can scratch off the coarse particles more carefully. That takes about a week.

Back to Earth

I visited my parent's house two weekends ago, and found yet another earth pigment! My dad had dug a very deep hole with his excavator, in hopes that he could make an artificial pond. No such luck. But what he thinks might be sandstone (too soft for it in my opinion) I think might be related to ochre.








Here's a couple of comparison shots between the three tones I've found on his land so far. The brown/red is his normal soil, the reddest sample is that same soil after a bonfire has taken place on top of it, and the yellow/ochre is in his orchard, starting at about 4 feet deep in pockets, and showing up as deep as the 12' or so hole that he dug.





By the way, I was able to see different colors in this sample, like sedimentary layers. Maybe in a few thousand years, it would become a sedimentary rock.

Here's what it looks like in a standard slurry test (my attempt to get the fine particles separated out from the coarse ones with water. It settled in under an hour, very, very fast for such a test!). There's a lot of sand in there. I crushed it first in my mortar, and I think the crushing might have affected the color a bit. It's redder now. We'll see how it handles when it dries.

Baby (Blue) Steps

I finally did a sound check at our house. One of the things that has been slowing my progress (besides Valve's Orange Box-O-Distractions) is my worry that I'll wake Ravenna up at night. So, I cranked some music in the garage & listened in her room. Barely can hear it!

I crushed some Azurite tonight & ground it into a powder. I wore a particle mask, but when I took it off after I was done, there was no burning hair smell like Lapis Lazuli. I then mixed it with water, so the finer particles will settle on the top. I've read that mixing it with soap & boiling it will leave the good stuff on the top, but I didn't want to go through all the trouble, so went with the slower way.

Since I was at it, I also did the same for the crushed eggshell in another container. Both formed bubbles, and the azurite had a lot of floating pigment on top, as you would expect when mixing flour with water the wrong way. I'll hopefully get some photos soon.

Good News & Bad News

From Troy McFarland: Art From Scratch

I've been reading The Materials & Techniques of Medieval Painting By Daniel V. Thompson on the bus for a couple of weeks now.

I'm pleasantly surprised that some of the techniques I came up with to create a pigment are listed in here. For example, I took a patina recipe on the web (salt, ammonia, & vinegar), and experimented with it until I found that using just vinegar produces the best pigment. This was done a variety of ways in Medieval times for the same reason. The pigment is called 'Verdigris', also described in the book as an 'acetate of copper'.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that I just did an MSDS search on the effects of Copper (II) acetate, and it is not safe at all. Here's the MSDS, and here is the wiki entry on it.

By the way, vinegar fumes will create lead white pigment, which is potentially even scarier than copper (but not by much, it would seem)

I may continue to use this green pigment, but maybe it would be safer to stick with ground malchite.

Hazards listed on the MSDS site (thankfully I've been using a resperator & keeping Ravenna out of the garage with working with it):

Emergency Overview
--------------------------
DANGER! CAUSES EYE BURNS. HARMFUL IF SWALLOWED. CAUSES IRRITATION TO SKIN AND RESPIRATORY TRACT.

SAF-T-DATA^(tm) Ratings (Provided here for your convenience)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Health Rating: 2 - Moderate (Life)
Flammability Rating: 1 - Slight
Reactivity Rating: 1 - Slight
Contact Rating: 3 - Severe
Lab Protective Equip: GOGGLES & SHIELD; LAB COAT & APRON; VENT HOOD; PROPER GLOVES; CLASS D EXTINGUISHER
Storage Color Code: Green (General Storage)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Potential Health Effects
----------------------------------

Inhalation:
Causes irritation to respiratory tract, symptoms may include coughing, sore throat, and shortness of breath. May result in ulceration and perforation of respiratory tract. When heated, this compound may give off copper fume, which can cause symptoms similar to the common cold, including chills and stuffiness of the head.
Ingestion:
May cause burning pain in the mouth, esophagus, and stomach. Hemorrhagic gastritis, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, metallic taste, and diarrhea may occur. If vomiting does not occur immediately systemic copper poisoning may occur. Symptoms may include capillary damage, headache, cold sweat, weak pulse, kidney and liver damage, central nervous excitation followed by depression, jaundice, convulsions, blood effects, paralysis and coma. Death may occur from shock or renal failure.
Skin Contact:
May cause irritation with redness and pain.
Eye Contact:
Corrosive. May cause irritation, redness, pain, blurred vision, discoloration, and damage.
Chronic Exposure:
Prolonged or repeated skin exposure may cause dermatitis. Prolonged or repeated exposure to dusts of copper salts may cause discoloration of the skin or hair, blood and liver damage, ulceration and perforation of the nasal septum, runny nose, metallic taste, and atrophic changes and irritation of the mucous membranes.
Aggravation of Pre-existing Conditions:
Persons with pre-existing skin disorders, impaired liver, kidney, or pulmonary function, glucose 6-phosphate-dehydrogenase deficiency, or pre-existing Wilson's disease may be more susceptible to the effects of this material.

Screw the Canvas!

So, I've been reading the book "The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting" by Daniel V. Thompson.  (Thanks for the Christmas present cousin Debbie!) It's a great read, and I highly recommend it. Anyway, I've never really liked painting on canvas.  It's a hard to do detail work with all those bumps.  Reading his book, I've found that the surface of choice back in the day was wood panels, primed & prepared with gesso and plaster and other stuff.  With glue made from cheese.  Thats just too cool!  Who knew that cheese and lime could make glue?!

I've been avoiding the whole making the canvas part of this project for a while.  I mean, canvas involves growing stuff, and rotting (er, I mean retting) and beating the crap out of it, then spinning it & weaving it etc. 

 

I don't know what it is, but I just don't like most fabric arts.  There was some really huge 'soft sculptures'  (let's be honest, they were stuffed plushies on steroids) at a modern art museum the first time I went to LA.  I was not impressed.  I just couldn't take it seriously.

Now wood is a different story.  To make a wood panel, I first will need to make some wicked cool metal tools.  That means I'll have to do pretty much everything except maybe the smelting.  Casting, forging, sharpening, trying to figure out if I really need to smelt tin to mix with copper to make bronze or if *ANYONE* on earth had tin back in 4004 BC.  That could be very cool.  

Cool, because this will involve fire, furnaces, hacking and cutting.  The artistic equivalent of shoveling the snow in the dead of winter while exiled in Siberia. I'm pretty sure I can work carving in there if I try hard enough.  Actually a lot of wood panels had carved inlays in the work.  So there.  I can.  

I'm much more excited about this now.  Anyone know the building codes of Seattle, and if permits are needed for kilns & furnaces and the like in one's backyard?

Time to get back on the horse

Well, after too much time spent on video games and surfing the web, my computer recently succumbed to a nasty Vundo trojan.  (I'm writing this on my wife's Mac). 

Sidenote:  I recommend against surfing the web for the lyrics to Cyndi Lauper's "She-Bop"  Bigger waste of time than I could have imagined.  If you do, do it on a Mac, or at least have all your software up to date.  Vundo is nasty and now I need to nuke & pave my machine!

So, for the last couple of days, I've stayed away from the computer at home.  When I got home tonight, I had some late Christmas presents from my cousin Debby  arrive.  In addition to a very cool Richard Cheese CD & Golf Journal, I got the book: The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting by Daniel V Thompson. Talk about great timing!  I've already read the Lapis Lazuli section, and am hoping to make it through Azurite shortly.  Finally I can put that expensive hunk of rock to good use!

Maybe I shouldn't have gotten those games...

Considering how much Art From Scratch work I've done recently, maybe I should have reconsidered buying the Orange Box as a reward for getting my webhosting mess in order.

Curse you Valve! Your games are too good! And I just bought Half Life for 98 cents last night and played it waaay too long!

By the way, my wife knows why it's called Half-Life. It's because that's how much time has been taken from my other activities.

Random, The other blog.

I realize that I shouldn't be putting too many non-art related ideas in this blog. And politics don't belong here either. So I created a new blog for such items.:
http://troymcfarland.blogspot.com/

If random ramblings interest you, I hope you'll visit.

Cheers,
Troy

He DID make his own tools... sort of

I rented "Alone in the Wilderness" from Scarecrow Video (The Powell's bookstore of video rentals... if you can't find it here, and they don't know how to get it, the tape cannot be found), and Dick made the handles for his tools. His reasoning was that it would be easier to pack into the area. This video is really worth watching. He wasn't a sport hunter, and wasn't a hippie. He hunted and grew his own food and respected the land. He reminded me a lot of my Grandpa Dow.

PBS Rocks

I was channel surfing today, and saw a piece on PBS about Richard Proenneke, a man who retired at 50 in 1967, built a cabin on a lake in Alaska (FROM SCRATCH), and lived there for 30 years.

I happened upon this program on local PBS affiliate KCTS about halfway through. So, I don't know if he built his tools from scratch. I doubt it. But I was amazed at how well he was able to use his tools. I was also surprised at how well he was able to make boards out of a log with just a handsaw. When I've tried sawing with the grain, the grain usually pulled me where it wanted to go, and the cut never looked very good.

You can find & buy the DVD at http://www.dickproenneke.com/

M. Graham Factory Tour: Now on Blogger

Here's a reprint of the in depth article I did about the M. Graham Paint Factory tour from June of last year. It was on an older server, so I'm moving it over here for easier access. Probably one of the longest posts you'll see on this site :)

The original overview blog post is here.



I met Art Graham a number of years ago when he was giving demonstrations (and free samples of his paint!) at the University of Oregon Bookstore’s annual Art Tools of the Trade show. He was very generous in not only his samples, but also in sharing knowledge. At the time I was getting ready to work on an oil paint based stop frame animation. One problem I kept running into was that my paint would keep drying on me before I was done with a scene. I switched to M. Graham paints for the piece which helped (walnut oil dries slower than linseed oil), but the one suggestion he gave me that really did the trick was to add a couple of drops of clove oil to the mix. This slowed down the drying time to about three or four weeks before I got a skin on the paint. My locker smelled like clove oil for the rest of the year!

So, when I was getting ready to start the From Scratch project, he sprung to mind as someone who could help.

The Visit

We visited M. Graham paints on Wednesday, April 11. Before I visit any place for the first time, I inevitably imagine what it will look like and how the experience will play out. These expectations are never same with the reality. Not better or worse, just different. I expected a larger building, as I had no idea how much space the mixing, milling, and filling machines would take up. It was a cozier and friendlier than I expected. One thing that did match my imagination was the passion for quality that was evident in every step of the process. There was also a sense of pride and idealism. This company is being run by someone who simply will not compromise quality for profit. One reason Art started his own company was when he worked at a previous artist’s color company, he began to question why there were formula changes throughout the years. He found out it always came down to money over quality.

I also had no idea how much of the process was done by M. Graham paints, and how much was left in the hands of vendors. What I learned was that instead of doing absolutely everything (like my project), Art is more like a master chef. He carefully chooses the finest ingredients, and mixes them according to his carefully guarded recipes for maximum quality in his paints. His art lies in coming up with the best mixture.

So, his company doesn’t create the pigment, but has found companies who provide the best pigments available. He doesn’t grow the walnuts that go into his walnut oil, but he has found a supplier who has a consistency that is perfect for his paints. He doesn’t smelt and roll the metal that becomes his tubes of paint… you get the idea. He concentrates on the act of creation.

Coming up with the perfect mix is quite a process. First of all, there’s qualifying a vendor. For him, qualifying a vendor is a major undertaking, and once one is secured, he sticks with them for a very, very long time. He looks for quality, consistency and reliability from a vendor. If a pigment is not consistent, then it requires tweaking each batch of paint to get a good result, which takes more time and can throw off production and delivery times for his product. Disappointing the stores that sell his paint is something he doesn’t want to do. Although he could save money with cheaper pigments from China or India, he feels that the quality and consistency just isn’t there. In fact, some pigments such as alizarin crimson cost him ten times the amount he could get elsewhere, but he feels that it is worth it to get the best.

Making Paint



One of the main differences between M. Graham & their competitors is the pigment load in their paint. “If I can find a way to put another 5 pounds of cadmium into a batch of paint, I’ll do it” says Art. Their oil and acrylic paint consist of only the pigment and the medium. That’s it. No fillers or other agents to save on costs.

The pigment and medium are weighed (accurate to 1/100th a pound), mixed, and milled. After milling, the paint is mixed again, which makes it more workable for the artist. Finally, the tubes or jars are filled, aged, boxed up and shipped.

Every pigment has its own color, tint strength, particle size, weight per gallon, and absorption of medium. The goal is to create a dispersion. That is, to surround every atomized granule of pigment with the medium, with no clumps. In the case of his oils, that medium is walnut oil. There are a number of ways to do this, but M. Graham paints uses a three roll mill, which through its shearing action, pulls apart the pigment clumps. Simply crushing the mixture will not work. Such action can change the properties and color of a paint. For example, crushing cobalt shatters its crystals, turning it from a brilliant blue to a dull gray.

There are three things to consider when coming up with a recipe for milling a color. Every color has its own pressure, number of mill passes and speed. It’s a trial and error process, a craft. Minor modifications will make a huge difference.

Acrylics

Although they are fully compatible with other acrylics, M. Graham acrylics feel different. I’m not sure I can describe this very well, but whereas other brands feel like you’re painting with plastic, his paint feels unique. The only way I can describe is “feeling the pigment as you paint”. It would also seem that the color has more depth than other paints. Finally, the type of acrylic medium he uses in his paint dries a lot harder and binds a lot better than other acrylics I’ve used.

Gouache

Although I don’t currently work in gouache, my friends who belong to the SCA do (you know, people who dress up in medieval garb and hold festivals). They absolutely love M. Graham’s gouache, not only because it’s the closest thing you can get to “period paint” (historically accurate ingredients) but also because it works so well. There are two unique things to note about this paint compared to other types of gouache. First of all, one of the ingredients is honey, which makes for smooth application. Second, unlike most gouaches that have fillers to make every color opaque, Art makes his paint opaque simply by loading it heavily with pigment. For some colors, this means that they are still transparent, but this gives the artist more options. If they desire opacity, the artist can mix paints to create this effect.

Oils

His oil paints are walnut oil based, and are compatible with linseed oil paints. This is the same type of oil the masters used, and does not yellow like linseed oil. (Linseed oil is a byproduct of the linen industry, so its use in artist paint is a little more modern). Walnut oil dries slower than linseed, which gives the artist more time to work the painting. If a faster dry time is desired, M Graham also provides a walnut alkyd medium. One added benefit of using walnut oil over linseed, is that brushes can be cleaned in walnut oil and soap rather than nasty solvents. This is better for the health of the artist, and better for the environment.

Safety & Environmental Responsibility

Speaking of safety, although his insurance provider won’t let him use the words “non toxic” or “edible”, M. Graham makes every effort to keep the toxicity of the pigments low. Most pigments are pharmaceutical, cosmetic or food grade. Their cadmium pigment is ground a little coarser than other companies. This provides a better texture to the paint, and a positive side effect is that it is considered biologically unavailable, and is not absorbed by the body’s fat cells. This not only is good for their clients, it’s important that he has a safe working environment for his employees and himself. Also, he buys locally when possible, to reduce the carbon footprint of his product (further distance equals longer shipping in trucks and boats that pollute the environment)

Wrapping it Up

I’d like to say that the only reason I visited M. Graham paints was to get leads on how to make my own paint from scratch. While Art was very helpful with tips on paint making, suggesting on books to read and things to try, that was just a paper thin excuse to visit him and the place that makes the paint I love so much. There are a scarce few people in this world who are truly passionate about what they do. Of those, even fewer are as idealistic, helpful and welcoming as Art Graham. If you’re an artist, he’s just fun and inspiring to be around. His paint is in the ever-shrinking class of products that are truly great, products that are the honest quality you expect. Martin Guitars, Craftsman wrenches (guaranteed forever, not just your lifetime), Flexcut carving tools. If you paint, you really should give them a try.

As it says on the entranceway, “Every artist deserves the finest color that can be created”.

New Name! Same Great Taste

I’ve been telling myself for months that I need to get it together and combine my registrar and web host to one company, and to finally make use of a couple of domains that I registered over a year ago. It got to the point that I’ve promised myself a copy of Orange Box once I take care of all my web clutter. I finally did the first step last night, and now I’ve got four addresses pointing to this blog!
I’ve always wanted to call the project “Art From Scratch” but the .com version of the name was already taken (by Rachel… visit the site here ),
Now that the .net & .org versions have opened up I snatched ‘em as soon as I could!
It's shorter. It's easy to remember. I can write it down on a napkin a little faster!
So, you can get here from http://www.artfromscratch.net/ http://www.artfromscratch.org/


And even from these addresses:
http://www.paintfromscratch.com/ http://www.paintingfromscratch.com/

One of these days, I may actually make those addresses point to a page that has the blog as one tab of many. But that would require actual effort. Effort that could be spent on grinding more semiprecious rocks into pigment! So probably not anytime soon.

If you go in the woods today, you'd better go in disguise

The family and I headed down to Veneta, Oregon, to attend the Oregon Country Fair recently. If you’ve never been, it could be best described as “Woodstock in an Ewok Forest” And thank God for the shade of the trees. That weekend was hot! Without them we would have been goners. Instead of staying at a hotel and taking a bus in each day, we decided to camp on some farmland near the fair with friends. A number of farms offer campsites, but we settled on Darling’s Reunion. This would have been a wonderful choice if I was single, in my 20s and didn’t need any sleep. Still, it was a great experience. And having camped at the Fair, Zumwalt park, and Darling’s, I can say that this is the best place to go for a great party. There were a number of vendors at Darling’s Reunion, and some of them had some nice gems for sale. The most prolific gem dealer there was form the Pink Bus. I picked up some Peacock Ore and will see if I can make it into pigment.





I also got two pieces of either turquoise or variscite from another vendor (kind of easy to mix-up).




There was also a really nice piece of malachite at another vendor’s table for a good price, but I was out of money, and there weren’t any ATMs nearby. *sigh* I might have to stick with copper and vinegar for green.

My Dealer was Back in Town...

I got a flyer & a phone call from John Garsow, letting me know that the Gem show would be coming back to Seattle in June 27th-29. I took my daughter with me. What I didn’t realize was that it was the same date as Seattle’s Gay Pride parade & Festival, ending in the same location So, traffic was almost as bad as the parking, but she really enjoyed seeing all the people dance on such a hot day at the water fountain. She’s not even four, and she’s already been to a Democratic Caucus, the Oregon Country Fair & a gay pride festival. I think this is wonderful, but now I’m pretty sure this website will be flagged by some church group as a prime example of how the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Anyway, below are some pictures of things I picked up from John at the show. I know for certain that the blue rock is Azurite.





I think the white one is Brookite (which contains titanium oxide) or Barite and I *think* the green stone is Variscite. This is what happens when I bring my daughter places. I get distracted and end up buying things without getting the facts. I’ll add an addendum to this entry once I confirm the exact nature of these rocks.







Of course, the reason I’m getting all these rocks is to crush them and turn them into paint. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Next Entry on Monday, August 4th!

And now for Something Completely Different...

I was able to procure the last batch of titanium sold at the now defunct Boeing Surplus store for Theodore Grey, (creator of the Periodic Table Table, and one who has talked to me at length via email about this project). This incredibly historic titanium unfortunately looked really bland in its original sheet metal form. After talking to him at some length about how to best identify titanium (see his January 2008 column here) I decided to spruce up one of the samples with my friend’s TIG welder. I really like how it discolors! Thank God he had an auto darkening helmet! I don’t think I could have written as well as I did otherwise.









I had a couple of pieces left over after this, so we decided to make an abstract sculpture. This was the first time I welded this metal, and used this session to just get a better feel for it. Since there was no titanium welding rod in his shop, I just had fun melting pieces into each other.

Next entry on Monday July 28th!

Improved Slurry Technique to Try

My wife is into knitting, spinning, and all things fabric.
Guess who I'm going to enlist to help me make a canvas from scratch? :)

She was talking with Michael Cook online recently about my project, and he suggested another technique for refining earth pigments. Michael has a very cool project of his own going on. Check out www.wormspit.com

Anyway, here's the full text of his technique. I'm hoping to try this out in a couple of weeks:

I asked Alyssa if you were levigating the pigments - and I figured I'd
reply to you instead of making her play messenger!

What I was doing, was grinding the rocks (mostly yellow and red
ochres, but also malachite and some whitish chalks) to a fine powder -
starting with a hammer and a pillow case, and ending up with a
dedicated coffee grinder. I would put that into a jar with water, and
swirl it vigorously to mix. The liquor of color would be on top, and
the grit would quickly settle out. I poured the liquor of color off
into a shallow bowl, and let it dry, which made a fine, usually
grit-free powder. If the powder still felt gritty after levigating it
once, I repeated, and then mulled the resulting powder with water
using a glass muller and a glass plate, then let it dry for storage or
mix directly with binder. I did a little paint-sketching with them,
although it was all just samples and I didn't keep a completed
project.

Couple of things to think about for this project:

This technique might be a lot faster than me letting the particles settle down, then have the entire jar of mud dry. And, it should give me a more consistent and finer particle.

How do I make a glass muller (or any muller for that matter) from scratch? Maybe a clay/ceramic fired one with a good glaze? Or maybe an especially smooth & flat skipping stone?



If I implement both this technique & the use of a muller, I'm hoping to get a nearly commercial grade of pigment. I'll post the results as I try this out!

Cheers, and keep the suggestions coming!

Egil's Update

This photo was taken by our 3 year old. Thanks for not dropping the camera!



Here's the spread of material I brought to share



Here's a shot of the Sunday class.

As I briefly mentioned, last weekend we were in Eugene at Egil’s, a SCA event. I had a great time sharing what I’ve learned so far with other attendees. I’ve already gotten an email from someone who has attended my class with some suggestions on things to try. Thanks!

Here’s some of the notes that people gave me to further my studies:

Books to read (they just happen to be *ahem* on my Amazon wishlist now)
The Craftsman Handbook by Cennio Cenni – translated by Daniel Thompson.
Also by Daniel Thompson: The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting.

Places to visit:
Glass Buttes in Central Oregon near Riley.
Apparently there is a lot of obsidian there of which I could make some good tools.

Niaux Cave in the Pyrenees

A note to visit the Newgrange Megalithic Passage Tomb in Ireland.