Sunday, April 30, 2017

Hand Refined Linseed Oil - Finished


From a bottle of raw "Flora" brand edible flax oil through three washes and four rinses - two cups of oil has become one cup of sun-thickened drying oil.  I'm loving using it!  It's a about half as thick as stand oil and takes a little more time to oxidize - a day or so.  It smells amazingly fresh - like cucumbers and linseed oil combined.  The pics below are from the process.


At times it was looking pretty gnarly and I was seriously wondering if it would ever amount to anything.


The pic above is mid process before clearing and thickening in the sun.  It just glowed...


This pan was set out in the sun every day for two weeks to thicken and clear the oil.  You can see a little calcium carbonate cloud on the bottom left from the last wash to neutralize the acid content.  As you can see in the first pic I was careful to not transfer that to the finished product.  

The second batch got it's final rinse today and will go out in the sun in the above pan as soon as the sun comes out here.  

All of the directions for doing this yourself are on Tad Spurgeon's amazing web site by the same name.  His book is called "Living Craft" which you can also find on his website.  I absolutely cannot recommend it Highly enough!!!  It's a phenomenal book - a comprehensive reference book really -  with an incredible amount of information that's not on his website.


Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Maui Winery


The private wine tasting room at the Maui Winery in Ulupalakua, Maui.  I worked on this twice on location and tweaked it in studio.  Would like to do a more finished painting at some point.