This Stone Is Pure Yellow Pigment

Someone once asked: “How do you do it? How do you know the sculpture should look this way and not another?” Michelangelo calmly replied: “It’s simple – I take a chisel and a hammer. You just approach the stone, because the sculpture is already inside. You only need to reveal it.”It’s the same with →limonite. It’s not a mineral that stands out or makes a strong impression at first glance. It’s simply a ready pigment — you just have to get to it and extract it. How?

Out in the field, where limonite may occur, you’ll come across sandstone chunks with an intense yellow color. Sometimes they crumble in your hands, other times they’re tougher pieces of rock. If they leave a yellow stain on your hands – it’s worth taking a piece back to the workshop.

There, it only takes a gentle tap with a hammer — just enough to break apart the cemented grains of sandstone. Once the rock has turned into sand and separated into individual particles, you pour water over the material and stir it thoroughly. No need to wait long. Quartz particles quickly sink to the bottom, and above them floats — briefly — the pure pigment from limonite. (It’s finer and lighter, so it stays suspended in the water a little longer.) The quartz at the bottom has no more role — it stays behind as useless residue.

You pour the colored water into a separate container. After a short wait, you pour off the remaining clean water. When it evaporates, what’s left on the bottom is a thin crust of pure, intensely yellow, limonite pigment. Known and used since →prehistoric times.

It’s not yet paint — this is just the moment when the pigment is released from stone. But when you break open a chunk of sandstone, it becomes clear: limonite holds it all together. It doesn’t just give color — it →binds. It acts like a natural glue. Without it, it would all just be sand.

Once you have the pigment, all it takes is mixing it with →oil to create a paint worthy of the old masters.