From 7a3672b4d789232d2d4f3d0c75a655b5f10a7f56 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: angela-debrow Date: Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:59:37 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] publish: angela-debrow-studio-ledger --- index-fragment.html | 6 ++ index-notes-fragment.txt | 4 + mixer.html | 224 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 3 files changed, 234 insertions(+) create mode 100644 index-fragment.html create mode 100644 index-notes-fragment.txt create mode 100644 mixer.html diff --git a/index-fragment.html b/index-fragment.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e1aee22 --- /dev/null +++ b/index-fragment.html @@ -0,0 +1,6 @@ + \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/index-notes-fragment.txt b/index-notes-fragment.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4789951 --- /dev/null +++ b/index-notes-fragment.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +
  • The Earth Palette Mixer
    put proportions on the tile — a live teaching tool
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  • Earth Pigments — composition & narration
    the film's full text, open for study
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  • A discipline of making
    grinding, binding, and the folding-table mentors
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  • Who keeps this ledger
    the artist, the organizer, the church-basement years
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    A teaching tool from the studio ledger
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    The Earth Palette Mixer

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    Before I let a young painter near a tube of black, I sit her at the tile with three earths — ochre, umber, sienna — and a jar of binder. This little studio reproduces that lesson: put proportions on the palette, add binder, and watch the color behave the way it really does.

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    The mixed puddle on the tile. Drag the sliders; this is grinding, quickened.
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    #7a4a2a
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    Equal parts ochre and umber with a third-part binder — a warm, settled brown that reads as quiet strength.
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    What this tool is teaching

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    Color is proportion, not palette

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    The temptation with earth pigments is to reach for a tube when the color isn't right. But every earthy brown on this tile is the same three minerals in different weights. The mixer shows what grinding taught me: you don't find a new color, you rebalance the ones you already hold.

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    Drag ochre high and low the umber and you watch value walk across the tile. This is the whole discipline — a hand that learns to steer proportion is a hand that stops buying color it could have mixed.

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    "You don't find a new color. You rebalance the ones you already hold."
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    Binder is the discipline's hinge

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    Setter in too little binder and the color dusts off like a lie the first day it's hung. Too much oil and it never dries, never sets, never forgives — a wet canvas that stays wet for a season. The sweet spot is about a third part oil to one part earth, worked in three turns.

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    Watch what the binder slider does to the puddle here. Below about a fifth, the color loses its hold; past half, it goes glossy and won't stop moving. Same lesson the old teachers gave on a folding table.

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    Grounded: clay earth pigments are naturally occurring minerals, Wikidata Q265894 (CC0) — my starting measure of 1 part earth to 1/3 part oil in three turns is field practice, passed down, kept in the ledger.

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    The three earths, from the journal

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    + Red, yellow and ochre mineral pigments +
    Ochre and raw earth powders. Photo: Pixabay, royalty-free.
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    + Earth pigment powder in bowls and stones +
    Umber and sienna, ground and waiting. Photo: Pixabay, royalty-free.
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    To the neighbor painters reading this — Angeline, Andrea, Albert — this page answers the wall question with a whole tile, not a single swatch. The paint I reach for first is the mixture, not the tube. Read the full argument in A Discipline of Making, or watch Earth Pigments: The Oldest Palette.

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