Lake Pigments for Painting with Soy with Natalie Stopka

Lake Pigments for Painting with Soy with Natalie Stopka

Online recorded Zoom workshop 

Saturday October 26, 2024

10AM-1PM Pacific, 1PM-4PM Eastern

Natalie is a remarkable instructor, smart, encouraging, organized and her popular workshops make pigments and paints so accessible.  We are thrilled to have her teach us how to create your own paints using lake pigments and the humble soy bean. Join us for a half-day of guided information as Natalie demonstrates making pigments and then transforms them into beautiful paints suitable for cloth, paper and other applications.

Natalie writes:

Transforming natural dyes into lake pigments gives them substance and stability, bringing the rainbow
of botanical color from the dye pot to the painter’s palette. Learn to extract color, precipitate lake
pigments, and turn them into soy-based paint with Natalie Stopka. In two class sessions she’ll
demonstrate the laking process and demystify its chemistry with an explication of pH, ingredient
ratios, value, and yield. Combining our lake pigments with a soy-based binder is an easy introduction
to the world of handmade paints, needing no special equipment. These paints are washable on fabric,
can be layered on top of natural dyes, and also work nicely on paper, wood, and leather.

Participants will receive a kit complete with 3 natural dyes, 2 earth ochres and indigo pigment, mordant, modifiers and other ingredients to make pigments, along with filters and fabric for painting. Shipping within the United States is free.  International students pay standard shipping.

Equipment needed

• Distilled water, 1 gallon/4L
• Digital scale, metric
• Dye pot, 1qt/1L
• Sieve
• Wide-mouth canning jar or beaker, 1qt/1L
• Plastic masonry or plastic bucket, 5qt/5L
• Small lidded jars, approx. 4oz/125ml
• Blender(may be borrowed from the kitchen)
• Paint brushes of your choice
• Mixing palette/cups
• Disposable gloves
• Drop cloth for work surface
• Optional but recommended: Canvas stretcher bars and thumb tacks to stretch fabric, or embroidery hoop

About your instructor, Natalie Stopka

Natalie Stopka (she/her) is a Yonkers, New York based artist and educator focused on the material history of color and sustainable studio practice. Her collaborative, experimental printmaking captures the material and elemental interactions of botanical dyes and foraged pigments. These root her artwork to place with a seasonally evolving vocabulary of texture and color. Natalie holds a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. www.nataliestopka.com

@nataliestopka