Filberts Part 2

I did a lot of experiments with coloured earths, barks and tree resins, turtle eggs and all that kind of stuff, experimental binders - and there seemed to be acres of rock faces that could keep me occupied on murals and suchlike for a long time - so I began making and inventing kit to do it with.

Me: Did you manage to get together a good selection of pigments.

Dr Franklyn: ( Pouring tea) It took a lot of work but I was very pleased- I had four basic colours not including a soot black - a close yellow ochre, a sienna-ish red, and two kinds of green - blue was a problem and I found it depended on how long i wanted to take powdering down certain shells. I wished I'd known more chemistry really - but anyway - I called them my primaries, and after a while I became very sensitised to subtle variations in those tones - like when you begin the art of mixing tertiary colours together - absolutely enthralling.

Me: ( Accepting the tea) Thank you - I call them the colours of Neptune - they can be really spooky when you put them together in the right way. What did you do for a white?

Dr Franklyn: Yes, the Neptunian depths, ( Laughs) I know what you mean - they can shudder quite differently to the big blips of prime or secondary juxtapositions. There is a kind of naturally occurring cement that builds at the foot of some rocky outcrops, a gypsum of some kind I think- and often in sandy areas, I'd seen it used on the Greek Islands as a natural building material for garden walls and a sort of lime washing. Well I found something like it and made a decent chalky white - and that increased my tonal and tinting range considerably.

Me: I presume this involved the making of brushes somewhere along the line.