Paint
I’ve always wanted to paint. It’s such a flexible and expressive medium. I started looking into it, and oil paint is expensive. I looked up what it was made of, and its pretty much just pigment and oil. Seemed pretty simple.
Other people have done more exhaustive experimentation than me, and there are blogs entirely dedicated to the topic. It really isn’t all that complicated to make your own paint, it just requires a bit of patience. I won’t do too much describing, but I’ll give the general process and some little observations. I made the primary colors, and black and white, so I should be able to make all the colors from here. I do plan to collect rocks in the future, and start from scratch with a mortar and pestle. I carry a jar in my backpack for this purpose.
As with all hobbies you learn some interesting stuff along the way. Purple pigment used to be made of snails, with 120 lbs of snails yielding one gram of pigment. Blue was made of lapis lazuli, and was more valuable than gold. If you see any pre-industrial paintings with blue or purple, know that the artist was incredible well financed.
The general process is pretty much just two steps. Wet the pigment with oil, and mull it.
I got my pigments off of etsy, 50 grams of pigment is enough to fill a small jar halfway, this should go pretty far. It costs a fraction of the equivalent amount of paint from a good company.
The binder I used is a mix of linseed (flax) oil and beeswax to a weight concentration of 2%. I just weigh out 0.4g of beeswax pellets and pour linseed oil until I hit 20 g. I microwave this for a minute or so, and swirl until the solution is homogenous.
The first step is wetting the pigment, to do this you just spoon on pure linseed oil, start with 3 tsp, and fold over pigment until it’s all wetted, and forms a glob. Use less oil than you think you need, and adjust as you fold. I’m using a pallette knife, and a glass cutting board.
Once it forms a glob, you have to mull the paint. This is just dispersing the pigment into the oil, so it forms a homogenous paste. Mullers are expensive, so instead I bought an espresso tamper. To prepare the surfaces you want them to be a little rough to increase the friction. I just used sandpaper on the glass cutting board, and on the bottom of the muller.
With the glob of paint, use the muller to push down and make small circles. It takes a while. As you do multiple rounds you’ll notice the texture change. If its too runny, add more of the pigment, if its too stiff add the beeswax / linseed binder. Fold it in with the palette knife. Keep mulling. As you spread it out, do multiple rounds of spreading, and gathering into the middle with a palette knife.
Notes: Blue is well behaved and doesn’t need much oil
Carmine red is an absolute nightmare, and the pigment is extremely potent. If a drop gets anywhere you cant wipe it out without a crazy smear. My apartment looked like bloody murder, and this is the last color I did inside. I spent one hour making the paint and two hours scrubbing my apt with paint thinner.
As for the painting… I’m working on that.