Happy New Year 2024
Found and Ground Newsletter is now on Substack!
Dear friends, I apologise that it has been six whole months since I sent a newsletter! Well, at least it’s completely true that I don’t spam you… Since the publication of my debut book, it’s been pretty much non-stop and I am only now catching up with admin that I put off for a long time. I am writing this while awaiting my imported contacts from MC to export here, which probably includes your email address. As ever, if you would like to unsubscribe at any point, all you need to do is press the unsubscribe button at the bottom of the emails.
Unlike before, it’s now easy for you to browse and find all my newsletters here any time in The Archive.
The move from Mailchimp to Substack was for two reasons. Firstly, Mailchimp charge users after we have 500 subscribers and I don’t want to pay another monthly charge on top of webhosting, domain names and all the other costs of running a small business. Secondly, the user interface, appearance and features on Substack are much more to my liking for a simple newsletter such as this one. Plus, I am experienced at using it as my writing is published weekly here at
This newsletter is free as it is really just for information on my courses and classes. It’s also an opportunity to recommend other great art and related newsletters. However, if you want to support my work into natural materials research for my next book (details in the next newsletter!) or you appreciate my writing or art, and feel you can spare $6 a month, then head over to Uncivil Savant and take out a paid subscription. Founder members get a small artwork on paper from me in the mail.
STOP PRESS: 10th January is the last day to buy access to my in-depth pigment and paint-making course recordings made last year at Plants and Colour. Here’s the link.
In-person: Venice, Italy
My next two workshops with Artisans of Now will run near Venice, Italy from 27th March and from 6th April 2024. both run for 5 days and will be the same courses, just with a choice of weeks. The first week is already sold out. The food, accommodation and ambiance are amazing! I’ll be teaching ink making, pigments, natural paints, cordage, pastel making, ethical foraging and more. Simone will be teaching how to make beautiful simple wooden palettes for our paints which we will fill with earth colours. We eat together and there is plenty of time for questions, looking at books, socialising and exploring. Details and booking can be found here.
Online Courses coming up January and February 2024
Drawn From Our Ancestors - Online Demonstrations 24th & 31st January 2024
Learn quill and reed pens, improvised brushes, oak gall inks and more traditional drawing materials. £60
4-6pm GMT on Wednesday 24th and Wednesday 31st January 2024. Sign up here.
Want to sign up but can’t attend live? Recordings of the sessions will be available for two months. You will need to sign up in advance of the live session to access the recording.
This two-week course will give you everything you need to recreate the scriptorium sound in the comfort of your own home. Using simple tools, we will make traditional black and brown inks with oak galls and other tannins, with both a foraged and a refined studio technique. We will then make quill pens from feathers and reeds, traditional illuminator's brushes from the offcuts of the quill feathers and improvised and unusual brushes and drawing tools from a host of foraged, found and repurposed materials from your home and garden. You may never look at a stick the same again. There will be ample time for questions and a demonstration of many kinds of tools, surfaces and inks.
Making Pastels With Natural Pigments
Online Demonstrations 20th-27th February 2024
Including Pigment Preparation, Conte Pastels, Traditional Pastels, and Fixatives. £60.00
Two live Online Demonstrations 4-6pm GMT on Tuesday 20th and 27th February.
Recordings of the sessions will be available to stream by participants for two months after the event. Sign up here.
In this two week online course I will begin by demonstrating how to source, choose and prepare raw pigments, powders and clays to make pastels, including a brief look at washing and sieving. We will look at a variety of traditional lump pigments that can already be used like pastels.
The first week will cover how to make simple 'Conte' type pastels. This will include blending, tinting, and toning the wet materials to create a beautiful balanced range of pastels, ideal for tonal drawings.
Week two will cover a slightly more involved traditional soft pastel making technique. We will also look at testing, labelling and simple ways to make ecologically sound and waste-material storage for our finished pastels.
We will make two spray fixatives for works on paper for use by blow-diffuser or pump spray bottle, one is egg-based, one vegan.
My debut book ‘Found and Ground’ on making natural and foraged paints has just been translated into French, Spanish and German! I got my advance author copies in December and can’t wait until they start being available in shops and online all over the world. The Spanish version is published with Hoaki. The German version is with Haupt. The French version is with Editions de Saxe. Thanks to Search Press for making this possible. As soon as I have links when the books go live, I will put them here.
Upcoming events and recent articles
I have lots of other courses and classes lined up later in the year, at Embercombe and Schumacher College in Devon UK, in Belgium and in USA, but as all the details are not yet online at my hosts’ various venues, it can wait until the next newsletter. I taught a great evening workshop at Giant Gallery in the centre of Bournemouth. Thanks to the many who came, despite the local flooding.
Lastly, so that I don’t overload us, here’s something to enjoy over a cup of coffee. My Dark Mountain colleague the great travel writer and novelist Nick Hunt recently wrote an article about my love of ochre and colour in general.
Here is the piece ‘Heart of Ochre’. It’s a shame the magazine used a Roman emperor as the photo, as we don’t even mention murex, the shellfish which was the source of those famous purple robes, so I am leading here with something a bit less Imperial, and a bit more down to earth, instead. It a colour I gather with Nick and Otto the dog once a year, near Bath.
Have a wonderful, colourful 2024. See you again next month, perhaps, now that it is much easier for me to stay in touch!
Warm greetings from chilly Bournemouth, Caro.
