Hello and welcome to the wonderful exploratory world of the Indigo drawing stones.

I have put this short course together to encourage you to explore with me the properties and potential of this water-soluble deep inky blue piece of promise...
It was my friend Dee Walker who introduced me to the indigo in one of her Instagram posts. Now, Dee loves her art materials and has a really open and infectious way of working, so I am really pleased that she has agreed to film herself working with the indigo and talking about how she likes to use it in her own work.

I am also lucky to know Pip Seymour as we have worked together before, so after requesting some of this magic pastel, I eagerly ‘unboxed’ my art goodies and set about recording myself having a experimental session. The resulting film is a part of this course and you will be able to see how I approached using them for the first time on a couple of different surfaces.

The combination of rough, dry velvety marks with loose nebulous veils of colour is a heady one.
I have devised this series of exercises in the hope that they will not only help you to explore the possibilities of the indigo stick but also open up your approach to mark making.

If we were in a real workshop environment this content would most likely be covered in a full day session. But as you can work at your own pace then I suggest you may wish to linger over certain parts and maybe even develop a series of studies at each stage to help you really get to grips with this new material and get the most out of your time.

So be calm, be attentive, be curious and let the work evolve out of a conversation between yourself and the materials.