The Natural INK.
Guide
A self-paced guide for those looking to learn the alchemy of making botanical inks and
work with place, land
+ the seasons.
✺
Would you like to learn how to make your own inks with found and foraged plants and metals?
Are you curious about the practice of working with land-based colour?
Would you like to move away from working with toxic, synthetic and plastic-based art materials?
The NATURAL INK. Guide is everything I have learned about botanical ink making over the last 10 years, brought together as a self-paced learning practice resource for artist, makers and nature lovers who wish to dive into the world of making colour from the places and plants around them.
The guide features:
4 × 30+ minutes seasonal ink-making videos.
A beautiful 180-page step-by-step, written resource full of all you need to explore each element of this slow, seasonal, and sustainable making practice, complete with an ecosystem of hyperlinks and inkspiration.
The Seasons and Cycles workbook: a companion in exploring your relationship to the seasons alongside the practical ink-making.
An ink-making starter kit posted to your door with all you need to begin (minus the plants and a pot.)
Access to seasonal NATURAL INK. gatherings held from time to time online.
Everything you need to know from gathering plants to ink on the page
A self-paced botanical ink-making guide.
Here we centre nature dialogue within the inner and outer landscapes rather than nature dominance perpetuated by oppressive social and political systems.
We are living through a crescendo of poly-crises, experienced in our personal and collective lives on a planet that is showing clearly the signs of strain humans have provoked.
In centring our nature connection through practices such as…
walking and/or spending time in green spaces in rural and urban settings
respectfully connecting with and gathering from seasonal plants
making by hand
sharing our findings and learnings with our friends and family and within communities
…we are tending that which is sacred to our life on earth.
Here we welcome with curiosity our longing to do what helps us to connect to body, land and place through the slow, seasonal and sensory.
Here we go out to go in and turn inward to fortify our turning outward. We recognise and honour our interconnectedness with all beings through gentle acts of making.
Cyclic, collaborative, creative conversations with self, other and the more-than-human.
With this self-paced guide, you will:
Learn how to make ink from found and gathered plants and metals for your art/craft practice.
Connect with the seasons and plants around you and explore working with your local places.
Learn how to shift raw plant colour with metals and modifiers.
Make your own collection of seasonal inks and colour-shifting modifiers from the places you walk and live.
Develop the skills to experiment with natural colour through the seasons and years confidently.
Be supported in carving out space for your nature-connection time alongside personal reflection through the seasons.
Root and refresh your creative life.
Connect to a deeper relationship with the place and plants around you.
Be warmly invited to get stuck into the process, try new things, get curious, and make a mess.
Learn new and meaningful skills to share with others in your community.
Learn to respond to the seasons, land and your deep rooted creativity
Who is this for?
Makers/artists/crafters/creative noodlers: You may claim yourself as an artist, or you may cringe at the thought of doing so, but you make, you explore, you create things that weren’t there before, and you want to learn more about producing your own organic artist materials. The thought of incorporating a slower, less consumptive, more traditional craft approach to your work and play makes you feel excited.
Nature lovers: You feel the power in the natural world and are connected in some way to the cycles and seasons happening inwardly and outwardly. You enjoy spending time out of doors and are drawn to plants and the landscape around you. You may have favourite plants and trees you like to hang out with, and you are curious to learn more about them. This may not have much space currently in your day-to-day but you know that you benefit from time spent in the wild, whether in town, city parks, or rural places.
Curious folks: You are drawn to process and to ask questions about what you find. You are driven by a curiosity about how things work and like to connect the dots.
Thinkers/feelers/seekers/doers: You are affected by the ecological, social and political challenges you are witnessing in the world. You actively engage with tending to a more care-full community and world around you, in small and/or large ways. You want to nurture a regenerative creative practice centering ecological awareness, which also includes personal rest. You recognise that no one other person or group has the answer on how to do/change ‘the things’, and you are here for the active, messy inquiry.
The Natural INK. Guide
Cost: £120
The cost can be paid in full or through Klarna in an instalment plan.
This price is offered to support access to arts and nature for all. It is intended to be affordable and in support of marginalised folks in financial need, from the global majority, LBGTQIA+ folks and those with disabilities, chronic illness, d/Deaf and/or neurodivergent. It covers my costs and pays me a fair wage as a freelance artist.
Periodically, I offer discount codes to members of my Newsletter. You are warmly invited to join here