Good morning. It feels like a good day to be alone. Not lonely but just alone.
You might try to get there by staying under the covers for an extra hour or by putting on giant headphones and listening to that song while going for a jog. But these feel more like half measures: vaping at work, shopping because you hate your job, ordering an adult colouring book online. No, you want to match spring’s call. And being too much on the computer and talking too much to other people about what you have done and what you could do and what you will do instead of being inside the day, being inside your own body, just doing. And it’s warm. And all the water has melted making the river rush. You could collect. Make ink. Except that the plants are barely just up. And what can you do with a few green weeds anyway. And there’s barely any time until your next thing that you have to do. And you are nowhere near the rushing river and even the park is mostly grey. It doesn’t matter. Just walk outside with expectationless feeling. There is enough time. There is enough colour. Wandering alone you will find it. You will sluff off winter’s old skin. Under the bark, in the knot of the railway tie glistening gold, in the cut of a broken a branch or high up along the draped vine where a berry shrivelled dry still clenches last year’s vibrant purple. Here is spring. Go meet yourself alone.
I hope I didn’t sound too demanding when I said be alone. This spring with the documentary The Colour of Ink touring Canadian theatres and I have been grappling with the strange sensation of watching myself and my work and my friends projected onto big screens for big audiences of strangers in what used to be my most private discoveries. The promotional stuff is making me crave aloneness and I pictured you feeling this too. And its the meditative commitment to being alone with the materials that most draws me to Soraya Syed, Heidi Gustafson, Thomas Little, Lianna Finck, Yuri Shimojo, Grace-Lynne Haynes, Corey Bulpitt and all the other amazing colour workers you will get to meet in the documentary. I hope you have a chance this weekend for a little bubble of springing alone or together with nature.
—JL
Meanwhile in the Colour Lab…
I want to talk a bit about how to make green ink. And the pigments in underbark. I have discovered a few new things since writing Make Ink and since my descriptions of finding green in The Colour of Ink. Watch for a subscribers only email and conversation this weekend. Send me your questions or ideas about spring colours and I will include some answers in my findings…
I walked in the Gary Oak meadow yesterday in Victoria as I do everyday but after watching TCOI I look at what might become colour on paper. Amongst the fawn lilies and shooting star I found a tiny old fire pit with charred wood so naturally I thought to bring home a piece to make black ink. I only had water to mix it with and the alchemy was strange being that the finished liquid was almost like a mercury compound that floated a silver tone on top. I then thought I would make a quill pen to try it. So down from the shelf came one of many feathers and I did it! Made an ancient tool and wrote a few sentences with the ink! Not quite ready for the Book of Kells but good enough to spark a light in my little workroom.
Along the banks of Laughing Waters Creek (which edges our property here in Tennessee) I spent a gloriously alone afternoon collecting purple dead nettle (Lamium purpureum). I’ve made a couple batches of ink so far with varying results. First with vinegar & a little iron at the end. The color of the ink itself was very not-green. A golden ramen color, and I made a wash of the brothy color on some paper and went away, disappointed. When I returned, I found it had dried to a really good green, green with some yellow thrown in, sparkles a bit on the paper. Vibrant, verdant. Surprising! Did the green appear as it oxidized? What role did vinegar play? Did the yellow come from the yellow leaves of the dead nettle tips? These questions rolled around in my head. The next batch I made without vinegar & more iron=sage gunmetal color, interesting but not as exciting, though serviceable-I’ll use it for something, just not drawing leaves!
I have a good bit of plant material left and want to try again. I’d love any bits of wisdom you have about chasing down this prima vera color of the season! Your newsletter this morning is on target-I’ve been thinking about little else in the back burners of my mind.