Hello!

Welcome to Penpal Press and my brand new blog, Artist Alchemy. 

Hello! My name is Rachel, and I've been a watercolor artist for over ten years. I am also a single mom, home educator, cat parent, and stationery lover. 

Fountain pens, stickers, postcards, highlighters, pens, paintbrushes and pigment cover my room (and walls, see above!).

I was inspired to use watercolors years ago for the ability to set them aside when needed. They dry, and don't cause a huge mess, but I could go back to finish a project later as I had time. Rewetting the page, the paint, and making changes days or weeks later.

After doing many, many late night deep dives into pigments, their properties, and trying out many watercolor brands, I had an urge to try my hand at making my own watercolor paint!

It took me about a year (almost all of 2023) to research, experiment, and perfect my own binder recipe. Using honey in the binder helps the paint re-wet easily, but can cause the pans of paint to not dry well in the humidity of Virginia.  Finding a balance took a while!

Being able to mix my own combinations of pigment to create a unique color feels like alchemic magic. 

Now, even with many pigments becoming extremely hard to get due to our country's terrible tariff (and other) changes, I am enjoying the process of creating paint from pigment and binder, and sharing it with you all. 

As I try new pigment combinations, create cohesive paint sets to match my paintable artwork, and embrace lots of mistakes while painting, I hope you will check back in and see what I am up to!

I'm looking forward to share more soon.

-Rachel