Back when I slept less in my youth, I experimented freely with watercolors, and even tried turning dry (chalk) pastels into less dusty paint after reading of Monet's efforts with that. I had some success, but it was still a dusty process. Having pigment bound in pan or tube watercolors is still much neater for me.
I enjoy colors and can mix new ones well (thank you, architecture school color theory classes!), but can only get so many colors. Prepared, professional watercolors are often expensive, and only the most popular colors are economical to mass produce. So I was unduly excited when I realized I could make obscure colors into paint by hand using gum arabic plus pigment from the gorgeous and famous shop called Pigment Tokyo.
I've watched some videos online, and there is a risk of making too dry a mixture: this can result in a failure for the paint to bind to the paper/medium when used. I've picked two colors to test for now: if the paint sticks, I'll continue on! I took a spoon full of pigment and an equal amount of prepared gum arabic (diluted sap from an acacia tree), mixed them with tools (including the glass muller), and put them into pans to dry. The 'matsuba rokusho' felt a little too wet, while the 'koikushi yaki rokusho' was very dry, and needed more gum solution to blend at all.
I hope to learn some fun things from this experiment - and get some novel shades of paint, too!
