Strata Ink

Horse chestnut hill ink on tansy flower dyed paper. Painting wet on wet allows me to make the ink bloom repeatedly as the newly added wet ink reactivates the partially dried areas. 🌞 #botanicalink #botanicalpainting

ASMR 🔉 releasing these washed and dried foraged natural pigments. All found in the beautiful state of Oregon. 🌈

Earth pigments. These were all foraged close to home with my own two hands.

Making & Working With Natural Art Materials and will begin next week on Tuesday the 7th April 2026 Sharing practices for working with plant and earth based colour, deepening skills over the year to create an artist material tool kit from pastels, to inks, from metal-point, to gesso, and more. Taught by: @anniehogg_thewildhedgeinkco @londonpigment @strataink @foundandground @mushroomcoloratlas You can join these learning sessions individually, or join the whole programme and gain access to extra study groups and mentoring with the teachers. Here is a summary of the programme. The sessions will be monthly, giving you time to practice each technique between sessions. PAINT - Core foundations of paint-making, introducing key concepts, materials, binders and basic processes - Lucy Mayes COLOUR - Creating a palette of personal primary colours with earth and plant based colour - Carolyn Sweeney PAPER - Choosing papers for natural colour work, exploring the effects of different types of paper and sizing with wet and dry media - Carolyn Sweeney PENS - Making an ink that can be used in a fountain pen and refillable felt tip markers. Demonstrating how to make Quill Pens, bamboo, & reed pens. - Annie Hogg & Caroline Ross MODIFIERS - Mushroom Inks with Modifiers & Binders - Julie Beeler PIGMENTS - Fundamentals Deep Dive: Moving into greater depth and complexity with the addition of particle morphology etc - Lucy Mayes PASTELS - Graphite / conte / graded hard pastel making method - Caroline Ross LICHEN - The Science & Art of Lichen Based Colour - Julie Beeler LAYERING - Layering different types of natural colour- wet and dry mediums, botanical and mineral colours, water-based and oil-based mediums - Carolyn Sweeney GESSO - Gesso workshop, with extra elements of panel preparation - Annie Hogg METAL-POINT - On prepared paper: warm coppery tones, greys, blacks - Caroline Ross 🔗 For more info, find the link at plantsandcolour.com (link in bio)

From plants to painting. The blue areas on the painting were made by pouring cooked privet berries over the same stencil. These plants grow within 50 feet of my studio door. ☺️ #lakepigments #lakepigment #botanicalcolor #botanicalpainting #abstractbotanicals

Lots of things happening in the studio, even if I’m often not sure where they are heading. The first two are finished and from there it’s raw experiments. Much of this is spiraling out of my thought experiments during the planning for my upcoming online classes with @plants_and_colour on Personal Primaries, Choosing Paper, and Layering Natural Color. Nothing like creating new classes to bring an endless string of questions to mind! 1 Teeth 2 Egg 3 cooked privet berries on paper, over a stencil 4 privet berry ink on unsized paper 5 red Oregon clay “rock juice” on unsized paper 6 cooked privet berry marks on paper 7 is 6 with Goldenrod Lake watercolor added 8 wet raw soy milk on unsized mulberry paper #teachingartist #teachingartists #naturalcolor #botanicalcolor #naturalpigments

The ‘Making & Working With Natural Art Materials’ programme of online classes and will begin next month on Tuesday the 7th April 2026 Sharing practices for working with plant and earth based colour, deepening skills over the year to create an artist material tool kit from pastels, to inks, from metal-point, to gesso, and more. Taught by: @anniehogg_thewildhedgeinkco @londonpigment @strataink @foundandground @mushroomcoloratlas You can join these learning sessions individually, or join the whole programme and gain access to extra study groups and mentoring with the teachers. Here is a summary of the programme. The sessions will be monthly, giving you time to practice each technique between sessions. PAINT - Core foundations of paint-making, introducing key concepts, materials, binders and basic processes - Lucy Mayes COLOUR - Creating a palette of personal primary colours with earth and plant based colour - Carolyn Sweeney PAPER - Choosing papers for natural colour work, exploring the effects of different types of paper and sizing with wet and dry media - Carolyn Sweeney PENS - Making an ink that can be used in a fountain pen and refillable felt tip markers. Demonstrating how to make Quill Pens, bamboo, & reed pens. - Annie Hogg & Caroline Ross MODIFIERS - Mushroom Inks with Modifiers & Binders - Julie Beeler PIGMENTS - Fundamentals Deep Dive: Moving into greater depth and complexity with the addition of particle morphology etc - Lucy Mayes PASTELS - Graphite / conte / graded hard pastel making method - Caroline Ross LICHEN - The Science & Art of Lichen Based Colour - Julie Beeler LAYERING - Layering different types of natural colour- wet and dry mediums, botanical and mineral colours, water-based and oil-based mediums - Carolyn Sweeney GESSO - Gesso workshop, with extra elements of panel preparation - Annie Hogg METAL-POINT - On prepared paper: warm coppery tones, greys, blacks - Caroline Ross 🔗 link in bio

Make some quick botanical inks with me. I made these and many others in preparation for last weekend’s Botanical Ink class @wildcraftstudio . We always have a lot of pre-made inks to play with in addition to making 6 inks in class to take home. #botanicalink #botanicalinks #coreopsis #botanicalcolor

In June I will be teaching online with @plants_and_colour . My first class of the year long collaboratively taught class will be Creating A Palette of Personal Primary Colors. I’ve been doing research and making swatches to prepare. These are all potential palettes of natural “primary” colors. Some are the traditional RYB palette and others are geographic (the Clackamas River) or emotional (Swimming Holes of Oregon). We’ll talk about how to create palettes of your own and get you USING these art materials we taught you how to make in our previous year long class. I’ll be posting more about the three classes I’ll be teaching as I create the visual aids for the classes. You can sign up for them individually or the whole year @plants_and_colour . #botanicalcolor #naturalpigment #primarycolors #primarycolours

More details of Color Coded. Stop by the gallery and see it in person! Color Coded is a juried show of local and regional artists. In Color Coded, we asked artists to consider how color operates as a code, one that viewers can unlock and respond to in their own way. The show runs through January 31st Exhibiting artists: Carson Abbert, Eliot Allen, Tamara English, Karen Christie Fisher, Mary Beth Giraci, Jeffrey Gould, Pilar Hanson, Ochen Kaylan, Heidi Keith, Andrea Kelsey, Junkyu Lee, Steven Miller, Kim Nickens, Ian Nickols, Aimee O’Will, Natalie Obermaier, Chris Polich, James Robertson, Robert Shepard, Ellen Stern, Philip Stork, Jack Straton, Carolyn Sweeney, Amy Turnbull, Nancy Watterson Scharf Gallery hours: Thursday - Sunday, 12-5 pm 1100 NW Glisan, PDX —————————— #gallery114 #pdxartgallery #coopgallery #portlandartscene #pearldistrict —————————— @padaoregon

Artist Meet & Greet this Sunday 12-2pm @gallery114 . You can see these three folded color studies in their show Color Coded. It’s up until the end of the month (conveniently across the street from Blick ☺️). Come ask me questions or tell me about your favorite rocks. I’ll be dressed to match the paintings. 📈

If you ask me what medium I use, be prepared for a long answer. But I promise it will be interesting, because that is my favorite part. Everything is from the earth, whether botanical or mineral. #naturalpigments #earthpigments #naturalcolor