Michel Garcia Tutorials

What if you could do more than reproduce a natural dye recipe — and learn to build colour itself?

These two landmark courses bring together Michel Garcia’s most complete exploration of the sampler principle: a way of creating, comparing, naming and understanding natural colours through real dyed samples.

The sampler has always been more than a collection of beautiful shades. For the master dyers of the past, it was a working tool: a record of materials and processes, a promise that a colour could be reproduced, and an archive through which knowledge could grow from one experiment to the next.

Michel brings this tradition into the present. Drawing on historical dyeing practices, surviving textiles and the remarkable palettes of the Gobelins, he shows how a surprisingly small number of carefully chosen dyes can generate an extraordinary world of colour. Indigo becomes a foundation for blues, greens and purples; mordants shift colours towards light, depth or shadow; concentration changes not only intensity but often the character of the hue itself.

Throughout both courses, the Natural Colour System — NCS — provides a shared language. It allows you to identify a colour you have made, communicate it precisely, follow its movement through successive stages of dyeing, and begin with a desired shade and reason your way towards it. NCS does not give you a recipe. It gives you something more valuable: a map for thinking about colour.

Together, these courses take you from collecting colours to understanding their architecture. You will learn to observe what each material and process contributes, build shades step by step, and create a personal reference library that can continue to grow with every experiment.

You are no longer simply following recipes. You become the architect of your colour.