You may remember my flutter of initial excitement about the possibility of adding a stable blue to my palette. Yesterday I finally tried it in a quick painting in my journal. It worked! It’s so exciting to have this color to use now. But until next year, the supply is very small and I’ll have to go sparing with it. Once the dayflowers begin blooming, I’ll get busy harvesting and storing up more pigment.
How much blue on hand?
At first glance it seems like not much! All the pigment I have is stored in these 3 squares. The darkest one is almost fully saturated. The missing corner is the amount I used to do the blue in my painting in the photo above. It’s a small painting, almost 5 x 7″. There was a lot of pigment in that tiny snip, though, so it does seem to go a long ways. Unless I go wild with blue, I think these squares will last until the flowers bloom again next summer.
All I have on hand, literally and figuratively 
The tiny snip, wetted and ready to use
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Author/Artist Info
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Madison Woods is a self-taught artist who moved to the Ozarks from south Louisiana in 2005. In 2018 she began experimenting with watercolor painting, using her local pigments. She calls them Paleo Paints. In 2023 she began her journey into the world of oil painting with those same pigments. Her paintings of the Ozark-inspired scenes feature exclusively the lightfast pigments foraged from Madison county, Arkansas. Her inspiration is nature – the beauty, and the inherent cycle of life and death, destruction and regeneration. Wild Ozark is also the only licensed ginseng nursery in Arkansas. Here’s the link for more information on the nursery end of life out here.
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I really like that painting, Madison!!
So, I’d say the blue is a ‘go’, then? LOL, honestly, I was worried it would make my paintings look like all the other paintings in the world if I had blue skies… but I really like it too. Thank you.
Beautiful! Quite ethereal!
Thank you! It feels surreal to have a blue after wishing for it for so long, ha, but being unwilling to just go out and buy some. I like anything ethereal, so glad you get that impression!