August 2nd, 2025
10:00 am - 4:00 pm
Cultus Bay Garden, Whidbey Island WA
 
Natural watercolors can bring both delicate and powerful colors to your artwork. Compact and perfect for traveling, a set of hand-made, natural watercolors will be a delightful companion! During this workshop, we will learn how to extract colors from botanical sources and convert them into non-soluble lake pigments, which can then be mulled into watercolor paints. Participants will practice making a lake pigment from a dye-producing flower from start to finish. Many materials will be collected before the workshop, but we will walk the property and discuss ways to identify color-producing plants. During the second half of the workshop, we will mix up custom watercolor palettes from botanical lake pigments. You will leave with six half-pans of watercolor paint and a storage box. 
 
Techniques covered in the workshop include identifying sources of color in nature, converting a dye bath into a lake pigment, paint binder recipes & optional additives, blending pigments to create secondary colors, and mulling pigments into watercolor paints.