Make Your Own Watercolours

From this array of genuine pigments and a solution of gum arabic ( with some gum tragocanth and a little Yorkshire honey)

we have been preparing our own watercolours to augment the delicious selection already carefully selected for us from Kremer (which includes lapis lazuli!)

We've made gamboge, 2 different colours of madder (1 above), ground up Davy's grey and haematite and watched Pip brew buckthorn berries( 'Persian yellow') and madder root. They're currently in the drying room , hopefully ready to use today at Gordale Scar.

The torrential rain cleared up a bit to allow us to experiment with our new paint boxes sketching Malham tarn .Quite different to Winsor and Newton, they have a larger particle size which gives wonderful granulations but , at least to start with, give rather more delicate colour

Lovely as our paintboxes are, I covet this hugely expensive collection of watercolour 'pebbles', a replica made by Pip of those Turner would have used for an exhibition at Abbot Hall , Kendal.