From Plant to Pigment: How to Make Paint, Pastels and Chalks from Plants

A manual full of recipes for artists to create their own pigments, paints, and pastels from botanical sources.

Natalie Stopka is an artist and educator known for her explorations of handmade, homegrown pigments. In From Plant to Pigment sheinvites us into her studio, sharing the ways she has divested her practice of non-renewable synthetics in favor of the craft of handmade, homegrown, local colour.

Learn the fundamental technique of how to make a lake pigment, transforming botanical dye into lasting, vivid pigment. This book will give you the tools to make the most vibrant natural colors that are perfect for your own artistic endeavors.

Sections include:

Botanical sources (cultivating, foraging, harvesting and storing dye plants).

The studio larder (essential equipment and ingredients).

Lake pigments (including Natalie’s master lake pigment recipe).

Other plant pigments

Artists’ materials (using your botanical pigments to make an array of artists’ materials).

Natalie Stopka is a leading practitioner and artistic researcher of lake pigments and has been sharing her expertise and love of plant colorants with students for over a decade. Raised on the south coast of Massachusetts, she earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the University of New Mexico. She now lives in New York State.