Homemade Paint

This past week, Stephanie Barker & I were lucky to have Leah Castleman come and show us her latest exploration in making paint from scratch. We got to gather up various items to use as our pigment. We collected spices, coffee grounds, butter mints, charcoal, blackberries, leaves, etc.

This paint is a tempera paint due to its egg yolk base. We started by cracking open the eggs and separating the yolk from the white-which took me about 4 tries, it is a very delicate and tedious task haha. Once separated, we left the yolk in a cup for mixing.

The first color that I made was a dark rich brown that I made from mixing ground of leaves & a cinnamon mixture. I used a mortar and pestle to grind it up into a fine powder. I also made a beautiful green using the spice turmeric and charcoal ground up. Once the spice or object has been finely ground, I dumped it out onto the glass surface and add the egg yolk and add distilled water if needed, then mixed it all together with a brush.

I was amazed by the texture that each paint created from grainy to pasty. The color even changed once it dried and it would vary depending on the surface it was applied to. I used small scraps of plywood I had lying around that I had wood burned onto with a soldering iron. The paint helped my mini landscapes come to life.

I really enjoyed the process from start to finish and would like to explore making more natural and organic colors on wood to create tiny handheld abstracted landscapes. When I was in the kitchen helping this past break prepping for thanksgiving, I couldn't help but think about the what color paints the various ingredients could make.