Botanical Ink & Paint Making

Introduction

Plants for Ink and Paint Making

These are a selection of some plants that I have had success with. I want to encourage you to explore the plants that are growing around where you live. I recommend that you identify the plant first and check that it will not give off poisonous fumes or harm your skin. You can dry out plants to store them in air tight containers out of direct sunlight.

Coreopsis (Coreopsis Tinctoria) - Lake pigment, evaporated ink, or soda ash ink.

Marigolds (Tagetes spp) - Lake pigment, evaporated ink, or soda ash ink.

Madder (Rubia tinctoria) - Lake pigment, evaporated ink, or soda ash ink.

Avocado pips and skin - Evaporated ink

Onion skins - Lake pigment or evaporated ink

Oak galls - Evaporated ink

Weld (Reseda luteola) - Lake pigment

Symplocos (symplocos cochinchinensis) - Evaporated ink

Dahlias - Lake pigment, or soda ash ink.

Dyer’s Chamomile - Evaporated ink

Staghorn Sumac - Evaporated ink

Fruit tree bark - Evaporated ink

Walnut husks - Evaporated ink

Willow Bark - Evaporated ink

Camellia leaves and stems - Evaporated ink

Rose flowers - Lake pigment

Rosemary - Evaporated ink

Alkanet Root (Alkanna Tinctoria) - Evaporated ink

Recommended extracts:

Brazilwood

Indigo

Chlorophyllin

Plants that will fade

All fruits and berries, such as blackberry, beetroot, blueberry, elderberry. These purple fruits will fade to grey. 

Turmeric is light sensitive so will fade.

Beetroot is not lightfast.

A generic recipe for ink/paint plant extraction. 

All plants and fibres are different so in time you will get to know the individual characters of plants and fibres and vary your processes accordingly. This is a reliable simple starting point.

1. Weigh out your plant material.

   1. For the evaporation method, I recommend filling a 10litre pan. If it is precious plant material, then use at least 100g.

   2. For the lake pigment method you can start with a handful as a test.

2. Add this to a stainless steel pan. Add just enough water to cover. 

3. Simmer for 15 minutes. 

4. Strain off the liquid dye from the dye plants in to your pan with a sieve.

5. Return the dye plant to the pan, and add more fresh water to cover. Simmer again for 15 minutes. Again, strain off the dye from the plants in to your dye pan.

6. Repeat this step with the same batch of plant materials three or four times until all the colour has been extracted. Each time, tipping the dye through a sieve in to a pan

7. You should now have a pan full of dye ready for ink making. 

How long do different types of plant materials take to extract: Generally, roots, barks, waxy leaves and galls can be heated and soaked for much days, weeks, or months in buckets to extract the colour. Whereas flowers and tender leaves suit a quick 1 hour extraction. 

 An extra note for madder: For cleaner reds, madder root must be soaked in cold water and rinsed (discarding any colour that comes out from cold extraction). Then the roots are heated to just below a simmer to extract the alzarin following the steps above. It is important that the madder roots are not heated above 80 degrees celsius

Equipment and Suppliers for Botanical Ink and Paint Making

Materials

Please take appropriate caution when working with the ingredients listed below. Some of these ingredients can be harmful when in contact with the body. You are using these materials at your own risk. I recommend using gloves, eye protection, and a dust mask when working with powdered chemicals.

Soda Ash

I have been getting good simple inks through mashing up plant material in a small quantity of hot water from the kettle with a small amount of soda ash (5-10g) dissolved in it. The soda ash draws out the colour from the plant material. You only need a handful of plant material to try this. With some flowers such as coreopsis tinctoria, this barely needs to be evaporated at all. If you would like to try this. Please use caution as soda ash is a strong alkali. Wear a mask before the powder is added to to water and wear gloves, particularly when squeezing the liquid from the dyestuff.

 Creating lake pigment paints.

This is the process for making an insoluble colour pigment from a plant extract, this can be used to make paint by adding a binder such as gm arabic that sticks the pigment to the page, and a filler to hold the paint in solution such as water.

This is particularly effective with flowers such as marigold flowers (yellow), dahlias (pink, purple, yellow, orange, green), and rose (pink, green). This is effective with madder for a pink. Rosemary - yellow. You can try this method with any plant.

Step 1. Source Fresh or dried plant material eg. tagetes marigold flowers. I like to use African marigolds of the 'shades of gold' variety as these give a strong colour. 

Step 2. Cover your plant materials with hot water. Simmer for 10 minutes. Strain the liquid in to a large bowl. Repeat this process with the same flowers three or four times, adding the liquid to the same bowl, until there is no more colour coming out. I suggest using small quantities of water each time so that you don't end up with a huge quantity of liquid. Filter the dye bath to remove any plant material that might be in it. 

Step 3. Measure out your aluminium sulphate: 10g/litre and soda ash: 5g/litre. These two chemicals are potentially harmful to skin, lungs, eyes, and not safe to eat. I recommend that you wear a dust mask, gloves, and safety glasses. Make sure that the bowl is no more than half full, otherwise it may overflow. The mixture may fizz up. Add the alum to the warm dye bath. Stir gently. The alum will bind with the dye particles. Add the soda ash to the dye bath, stirring gently. It may produce a lot of bubbles. The soda ash causes the dye pigment to become insoluble in water and settle to the bottom of the dye bath. 
You may see a colour change, this can be dramatic, or it can be subtle.
The soda ash will neutralise the acidity of the alum. You can check the pH and balance it out to neutral by adding either more alum (acid) or soda ash (alkali). Give the liquid a stir and then leave it for an hour to settle.

Step 4. The pigment will settle to the bottom of the container. Pour off the top liquid in to another bowl. Observe this liquid. If it is clear, you can discard it. If there is still colour on the liquid, you can add a desert spoon of aluminium sulphate and a desert spoon of sodium carbonate to extract more of the colour.

Step 5. Pour the pigment that has settled in the bottom of the bowl through a coffee filter or in a sieve with a piece of cotton in it acting as a filter. This is a slow process. The pigment will stick to the filter, this is what you will use to make a paint or an ink. You can flush water through the pigment to wash it.

Step 6. You can collect the pigment from the coffee filter or in a sieve. I like to leave the pigment to dry out for a day or so, I wait until the pigment is thick and gloopy but not completely dried out. I then use a knife or spoon to scoop out the slightly wet pigment.

Step 7. You will need to add a binder to stick the pigment to your paper. I use powdered gum arabic that I have rehydrated in two parts water to 1 part gum arabic. I add 1 part gum arabic solution to 1 part wet lake pigment. I test it out, and then adjust the consistency by adding more gum arabic, more of the pigment, or more water until I have the consistency I like for drawing.

Step 8. Shifting consistency through pH. Try adding some acid to it, such as citric acid or vinegar. you may see a colour change. You may also find this turns your paint in to an ink as the acid breaks the lake shifting the pigment back in to a form that is soluble in water.

Step 9. If you want to create powder pigments or oil paints, rinse the pigments while they are in the filters with fresh water to remove impurities, and then dry and grind the pigments. You can then mix the pigments with oils, waxes, or other carriers.

 Working With Powdered Extracts