Last year, I enrolled in an online ink making workshop given by Maiwa School of Textiles. It took me a while but I finally finished it this winter. Although I have been experimenting and making inks for a few years I wanted to learn more about the process of making lake pigments.

A lake pigment is a pigment made by precipitating a dye bath with an inert binder, or mordant, usually a metallic salt. Unlike many other pigments made from ground minerals, lake pigments are organic.*

The idea is to make dry or wet pigments that can then be used to make inks, watercolors, and oil paints by adding the pigment to the different mediums. I tried a few different dyes and had mixed results; the tansy and goldenrod were both successful, the hopi sunflower was not so great (not sure why but it never precipitated) and the dahlia was and still is more of a Petrie dish than a pigment.

Here are a few photos from the studio.

If you are interested in learning how to make ink. I think the workshop at the Maiwa School of Textiles with Tim Mclaughlin, is a really great place to start. Workshop

* from the Ink workshop description.