Dream worlds
Painting with pigments from nature
You will need:
One A4 and one A3 sheet of white paper for each learner (or two A4 sheets each, if A3 is not available)
Flower petals – all available colours
Leaves – several different greens
Vegetables or fruit peelings, if available, especially raw pieces of beetroot, pumpkin, butternut and fresh peas (you can also experiment with other brightly coloured vegetables); berries, small pieces of mango skin, etc.
Various types of soil – different coloured clays and muds found in the vicinity
Egg white (if necessary) as a medium for binding the soils
(In order not to waste food, use the discarded skins and peelings of most of the vegetables mentioned above. )
The San found a range of beautifully subtle and (in some cases) long-lasting colours in their natural environment. If we were
to restrict ourselves to finding colours from nature, what could we find? Once you’ve collected a range of natural materials that can produce colour on a sheet of white paper, explore the colours you have found and, using your fingers, smear or rub each substance on your first sheet of paper to test for colour transference.
Then, on the second sheet of paper, create a picture. Do not use a pencil – work directly with the natural pigments. You might want to depict an actual dream that you’ve had; or portray an imaginary space, another world. Are there characters or creatures there? Or perhaps you might express your feelings about a world of the spirit, or a world of inner peace.
Your picture does not need to follow the logic of our real world, whether in terms of gravity, space, perspective, or scale. Place yourself in this space. What are you? Human? Part human,
part something else? What would you be if you could enter an
animal spirit?
Because you will achieve quite soft, slightly blurred colour by working in this way, the medium lends itself to creating a scene that is quite unlike our sharp-edged, everyday reality.
Dream worlds
