The Art Of Crafting Natural Colours & Fibres
Online & in-person learning directly from artists and makers who are working with local natural materials for colour and fibres. These are mostly one-off learning events sharing skills working with raw materials to make inks, dyes, paints, pastels, crayons, cordage, textiles, and more… We have different classes you can join every month.
Short One-off Online Classes & Talks:
RECORDINGS AVAILABLE
RECORDINGS AVAILABLE
RECORDINGS AVAILABLE
Longer Online Courses
An Online Year Course Starting In October 2024
Natural Colour Making
For Artists
A year-long course sharing techniques for making natural art materials for drawing, painting, and printmaking from earths, plants, and fungi.
This course has started but you can still join.
Taught By Julie Beeler, Caroline Ross, Annie Hogg, Natalie Stopka, Sophie Holt, Lucy Mayes, Flora Arbuthnott, & Carolyn Sweeney
Access all Flora’s learning resources. This is a thorough introduction to working with plant based colour for textiles and paper. Taking you through from growing and foraging for colour to processing plants for dyeing, drawing, painting, and printing. Covering methods of fixing and modifying colour using plant based and mineral mordants, as well as pH shifters.
Practical In Person Workshops In Devon
A Practical Day Workshop
Natural Ink Making with Food Waste
With Ione Maria Rojas
10-4pm On Friday 25th April 2025
Brentor, Tavistock, Devon
Learn how to make your own inks and pigments from food waste & edible plants.
Having heard many people say they don’t know where to start with natural colour or that they fear using the wrong thing, Ione will to show participants how simple it can really be and how most of us already have dye material lying around in our kitchens or growing nearby! We’ll work with food waste such as onion skins and avocado stones, edible garden plants including nettles and sage, and cupboard store goods like vinegar, coffee and bicarbonate of soda, making a broad range of beautiful colours for drawing and mark making.
An In-Person Practical Five Day Workshop
Drawn From The Wild
Found & Ground Level Two
With Caroline Ross
29th September-3rd October 2025
Brentor, Tavistock, Devon
So you want to go further into the wild, time travel some more, go a bit deeper with drawing and painting with Earth? To coincide with her new book with Search Press on foraged and ancient drawing materials Drawn From the Wild, Caroline has designed a ‘Found and Ground level two’ course.
An In-Person Practical Five Day Workshop
Found & Ground
Level One
With Caroline Ross
23rd – 27th June 2025 10:00 am – 4:00 pm,
Brentor, Tavistock, Devon
Learn essential skills to create your own art materials from natural resources. You'll leave equipped with a personal art kit and the confidence to gather and process pigments, make paints, pastels, inks, and more—anywhere your creative journey may take you.
“From believing that we must work with nature, to seeing us as working within nature, to understanding that we are nature working.”
