Jason Logan invites you to head outside and gather ingredients. Ingredients for ink.
Because there’s color in the twigs of a dead shrub, bits of metal on the street, and the leaves of the weeds in your garden.
Jason Logan is the founder of the Toronto Ink Company and author of the book Making Ink. The Toronto Ink Company creates and sells unique inks in small batches.
He writes beautifully about color in his newsletter and especially in his book. Just read the opening lines from his text on ‘BLUE’:
“Oh blue. It is the most open-ended of Colors. Heaven, sadness, the Ocean and the sky, Frank Sinatra’s eyes, the paintings of Picasso’s Blue period (1901–1904).”
Mr. Logan takes you on a journey around the world to tell the stories behind the ingredients that make the most beautiful inks. But above all, he encourages you to take a close look at your own surroundings and search for color.
The book is divided into three parts: harvesting color, making ink, and testing ink. The texts are rich and inspiring, accompanied by stunning photographs and visuals of his ink experiments.
But what I love most is that it inspired me to try it myself — to go foraging for color in my own neighborhood. There’s so much color in Amsterdam!
It’s also fascinating to see how some inks react to one another, or how they dry. I don’t know if my inks are colorfast — but to me, that’s not the point. It’s the beauty of watching the colors continue to change, just like my growing collection of inks.
Title: Making Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking
Author: Jason Logan
Publisher: Abrams
Text and photos by: Claudi Kessels