My interest in Clay ground started when I bought a painting surface from a local art shop called Ampersand clay board. I bought one to experiment with and I knew of a great watercolour artist who used them – Ali Cavanaugh. As I wanted to turn my earth pigments into watercolour paint, I wondered if I could get more of the ampersand boards, but they were out of stock and apparently much more expensive for some reason. I started doing some research and found that there was a way to create my own kaolin clay ground. I was excited because it means I could have more control over the size and shape of my artwork and I would experiment more freely seeing that it would cost a fraction of the prize if I produced them myself.
So I set of to buy some Kaolin clay powder, Rabbit skin glue and making my wooden boards. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was and after putting down a few layers of my mixture, I soon had a few boards to play with. I will add to this post later to show some of my experiments. I am still in the process of deciding whether to stick with this as a surface. We will see.
Here is the result:
