Thank you everyone, I really appreciate the compliments.
Jeffp51 - I think Im going to save the sinew you sent me for a bow backing, you did too good of a job stripping that stuff out for me to practice make a string out of it, Im not good enough at it yet.
Simson - That sinew job is thanks to PatM's tutorial.
Dratera - I think you are right about the water in the pigment that most likely affected the tiller...I thought i waited long enough after applying it, but waiting may have been irrelevant.
NZnuka and PatB - The making of the earth pigment was quite a bit more difficult than the research I found made it sound.
I used a mortar and pestal to grind the rock as fine as possible, then placed it in a jar of water for 30 seconds or so and let all the heavy chunks settle out, then carefully poured off the suspended particles. I stirred up the finer particles and let it set about 2 minutes, and once again poured off the finer suspended particles in another jar. I left this jar for a few days undisturbed untill all the fine particles settle out and the water is clear. Then I poured off all the clear water then let the fine "sludge" sit until dry, then scraped into a container.
I went through several series of this trying to get it to work to get a truely gritless particles. Even then it was still slightly gritter. I even tried making a muller from a beer pint that I sanded flat, and mixed the pigment with water and mulled it on a flat piece of glass with the pint mug, then let it dry again. This actually worked quite well. The price of mullers is quite expensive, and the beer pint seemed to work well.
Im sure there are orthers with better ideas about this, because I've only made a different pigments, and each is so different on how they have worked for me. I'd love to hear other ideas.
Thanks again for all the compliments.
