For those who don’t know, William Cowley’s is the last remaining vellum maker in the UK and the only one in the world to hand-finish the skins. They make use of the skins left over from our meat consumption, so that almost none of the animal is wasted. That is an important fact; no animal is slaughtered for the production of vellum. It is a waste product that would otherwise go to land-fill.
Today, four botanical artists and a self-proclaimed bag-man visited Cowley’s. We were looked after royally. I think in fact that they will need a day to recover from our visit!
Wow lucky you, I remember watching this on country file, thinking how much I would love to experience painting on vellum….but gosh it’s so expensive, it will have to remain a wish.
Hei Rebecca, Sorry I didn’t see your message before. I agree that vellum is expensive, but it isn’t expensive in relation to all the effort that goes into producing it in a manner for us to paint on. Also, it can potentially last for thousands of years – which paper won’t do, and if your picture isn’t going as intended you can erase what you have done and start all,over again. Particularly when you are learning how to get the most out of it, it’s a useful thing to be able to do. But of course as it is easy to erase I TIM ally, one has to be very careful when painting on it. The paint lies on the surface, that’s why the colour looks so luminous. Anyway, I hope you get to try it out before to long. Gaynor
Lucky girls (and Robin), had a try on vellum with Sarah M and it was lovely even with my very limited water colour skills!
Looks like you had a brilliant day! I wouldnt know any about vellum if it had not been for you 🙂 Where can we buy it?
You can buy it directly from Cowley’s Tone. They have a website:http://www.williamcowley.co.uk. But, it is best with watercolour used as dry as possible. I have tried coloured pencil on it and although it sits, you can’t get fine detail or really dark mixes with it. But this may be something one can look into and it may need a slightly different technique.