Overview: Course Plan (Dates from spring 2026 TBC)

  1. INTRODUCTION SESSION - Open to all registrants

  2. PAINT - Core foundations of paint-making, introducing key concepts, materials, binders and basic processes. - Lucy Mayes

  3. COLOUR - Creating a palette of personal primary colours with earth and plant based colour - Carolyn Sweeney

  4. PAPER - Choosing papers for natural colour work, exploring the effects of different types of paper and sizing with wet and dry media - Carolyn Sweeney

  5. PENS - Making an ink that can be used in a fountain pen - Annie Hogg

  6. MODIFIERS - Mushroom Inks with Modifiers & Binders - Julie Beeler

  7. PIGMENTS - Fundamentals Deep Dive: Moving into greater depth and complexity with the addition of particle morphology etc - Lucy Mayes

  8. PASTELS - Graphite / conte / graded hard pastel making method - Caroline Ross

  9. LAYERING - Layering different types of natural colour- wet and dry mediums, botanical and mineral colours, water-based and oil-based mediums - Carolyn Sweeney

  10. GESSO - Gesso workshop, with extra elements of panel preparation - Annie Hogg

  11. METAL-POINT - On prepared paper: warm coppery tones, greys, blacks. - Caroline Ross

  12. CLOSING SESSION - Open to all registrants

Making & Working

With Natural Art Materials

Natural Colour Making II: A Deeper Dive

An Online Programme of Demonstrations and Talks Starting in Spring 2026

Following on from Natural Colour Making For Artists, a yearlong course that took place over 2024/25, this follow-on programme offers deeper dives into approaches to making and working with natural art materials for drawing and painting. Sharing practices for working with plant and earth based colour, building on skills & knowledge over the year to create an artist colour palette of paints, inks, pastels, and pigments. This programme will be going into greater depth over a wide range of approaches to making and working with natural art materials from pastels, to inks, from metal-point, to gesso & more.

Registration: 

Join the whole programme: Sign up to the whole year long programme including the opening and closing sessions. Study groups are available for whole programme registrants. As an optional extra, new registrants will be able to opt in to add the resources from the 2024/25 Natural Colour Making Level One course.

Join individual sessions:  Students will be able to sign up to individual sessions. All registrants will be invited to the opening and closing sessions. 

Elements:

  • 12 monthly online sessions avaialble to join live or watch the recordings.

  • Opening and closing sessions with all the teachers.

  • Ten live online demonstrations.

  • Downloadable PDF handouts will be available for all sessions. With recipes & specific equipment & materials.

  • A reading list

  • An equipment & materials overview and guide

For whole programme members:

Access: All members will have access to the live sessions as well as the recordings in the member area on Plants & Colour Website. The resources will be available until March 2028, one year after the course is completed.

Time Commitments:

  • The live demonstrations will be two hours every month. You can either join live or watch the recordings in your own time.

  • In order to practice the techniques in your own time, this will require 6-12 hours per month of studio practice. The course is really what you make it. The more you can find the time to practice the techniques each month, you will get more from the course.

Meet The Teachers