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A few weeks ago I received a number of small plastic bags containing ‘bistre’ from my blogfriend Elvy. I showed you an art journal page last Friday (here) on which I’d used bistre, but that was not the first time I used the stuff. Today I show you how my first excersices with bistre turned out – and you will see why I am totally in love with that coloured powder!
Because I received six bags with different colours I was curious to see how they all would look like on paper. Not thinking about the outcome yet, I took my Chronicles art journal (it was time to make the next week-spread anyway) and sprayed water on the pages. The Chronicles is sort of a weekly diary, I hand-bound the journal myself using fine structured watercolour paper for the pages. The paper takes in water and paint like no other paper!
Then I sprinkled a little bistre powder from each colour on the moist page. I used a small brush to get the powder from the bag and tipped/sprinkled it on the page. After I had done that wich each colour, I sprayed more water over the page and wiggled the book to to let the colours run… here’s the result.
Bistre ink is a traditional ink made by boiling wood soot. The resulting ink color depends on the type of wood burnt to make the soot. Authentic Bistre is made from Beechwood and gives a transparent, dark brown with yellow undertones. (credit) I do not know where the red and blue comes from, but ALL the colours look natural to me…
… this background page in my journal raised a problem though… it was a bit too colourful and ‘busy’ to write over…. I’m glad I took a picture of it before I toned the pages down with gesso… on the finished spread, the wonderful colours and shapes are hardly visible anymore.
The Chronicles of Marit – week 48
Oh, and here’s a photo of what I bought last weekend… six little plastic pots to store the bistre and a set of spatulas (there are more, these are the smallest)
Now that I am well equipped, I’m all ready to make the next beautiful bistre-page…
Ohhhhhhhh I love love love how it turned out!! This is gorgeous!!!!
Hello Hello Dear Marit ~ Lovely to see your bister play! I recently ordered some from The Netherlands and played a little with them a little.
Your pages look great = of course!
Happy November Dear One ~♥~ oxo
Wat jammer om er overheen te moeten. De originele kleuren zijn prachtig. Maar ja, soms moet een mens praktisch wezen. 🙂
I’ve never heard of “bistre” inks. What an interesting way to make pigments – I suppose that is how many paints were made, before we had chemically-made versions. The colours do look natural and there’s a surprising variety there. I must investigate a bit further…
I like the result of your experiment, also the gesso-covered finished pages. You can always make more pages with just the bistre-ink and no gesso, so the fact that this was covered up isn’t sad really.
I wonder what watercolour paper you use for your journal pages, Marit? I like Fabriano Artistico, but I’m interested to know what you use.
Wow! Prachtig resultaat zeg!! Ik heb er nog nooit v gehoord maar nu pin ik t zodat ik t kan onthouden! Echt prachtig!