 Hey guys, all right. I have ventured down a path and got completely lost But it's a good kind of lost I think I decided to look into making my own peg paint pigments. This is What I have going so far I'm going to do at least a couple of videos with you and Go through my successes and my failures what I'm doing and why I'm doing it I don't understand everything about making your own paint pigments by any stretch of anyone's imagination I will link at least one channel down below that knows way more about doing this than I do and I do recommend you check them out alchemical arts and I'm sure I'm going to make some mistakes or maybe there's a better way to do things if you all know how to do that Then please leave something down in the comments Today we are going to go over earth pigments So that's this half These are all earth pigments. So First things first safety, so you're gonna want a pair of gloves some kind of a mask and glasses now obviously ideally an N95 mask, but Just wear a mask do yourself a favor wear a mask Why because you're going to be grinding flowers and powders and we do not want to breathe that into our lungs That would be how I got asthma in the first place is breathing in smoke and powder and Trust me. You do not want that What even if it's a harmless material the powders not good for your lungs so Glasses, okay Now I've been making notes If you're in my patreon I'm going to start sharing pictures of these notes with them and so and and samples pictures of samples and all that kind of stuff So if you want to get my notes which includes what I've used to make the pigments My formulas that I'm currently using and again my successes and failures Then join my patreon because they're going to get that. I'm going to be scanning those this weekend As I'm filming this is November 10th Anyway to make earth pigments by my understanding earth pink pigments are generally made from rocks or soil ground up and dried and then Mixed with your paint mediums now they could be mixed with a watercolor medium or an acrylic medium You also depending on what the pigment is could you know soak it in hot water and use it as a dye or an ink? But once you have the ground pigment and you store it I've been get using these little containers These are from the dollar store you get I don't know 12 of them for a dollar 25 Once you have the ground dried pigment it lasts forever And you can just make a little bit of paint or whatever you want to use it on at a time as you need it And I have labeled I'll show you this one. I just did today so I've labeled them and Lake pigments is a different video, but I've labeled each one of them what it is in the container And of course I've done swatches and I can refer to my book and my swatch sheet And when I run out I can see if I have something else. It's a similar color or I can go try to gather more of that material So to do earth pigments. I am using ground rocks But I'm including in that category dried botanicals now I have been for decades Saving different bits of leaves and foliage if you don't believe me ask my friend Leslie McGrath over at Leslie's Creative studio because she actually knows she's been here She's like, oh my god, you have so much. Yes, I do. I Have just found a new thing to do with it now. I have bought one pigment to get the blue from which is butterfly pea flower Which you it's a dried flower that you can make actually tea from and you can drink it Because I haven't found anything else that can get me a really pretty blue and at least from an earth pigment standpoint Not again, we're not discussing the lakes you get the ground flowers added to your paint medium Give you that blue by my thumb like Unbelievable So anyway, you're gonna need it something to grind the material with You're gonna need if the material is fresh and not already dry. You're gonna need to wait to dry it so In this case right now, we're gonna talk about This stuff's already dried now some of these flowers. I don't remember what these are We're gonna just do kind of I'm gonna call it garbage flowers and we're gonna mix a bunch of stuff together and just grind it together There's even a few pine needles here, but I'm not sure if I want to do those and I have a lot of lavender But I've already ground that So this particular electric grinder This is a mr. Coffee and it has coarse medium or fine and When you're making your pigments whether you're doing it from the laking process, which is in the next video Or you're doing it From an earth directly from the item you want to grind it until it's like a flower like consistency To get the smoothest paint now I'm not always super worried about the paint being super smooth But you do want to grind it and when you're grinding it you're gonna get some smoke and that's where you want to put the mask on So I'm literally just going to dump. I don't know what these are If somebody knows let me know but I have no idea what that is God knows I picked it. Who knows how long ago. I try to take some of the stems out because they really Don't add anything. You really just want the flowers We'll add there's only a few of these. I don't know what again. Don't know what they are We're gonna just add them in there And then these don't know what these are either No idea I'm gonna add those into that over there Have a container ready This is going to get loud Because this thing is not quite by any stretch of anybody's imagination. So now I'm just it's already set for fine I'm gonna hit the button and it's gonna just do its thing until it's done and I'll be right back okay So I took the this whole top part comes off of the machine To put my mask back up because when I open this it's probably gonna Yeah Some smoke so that I could get that finer if I wanted. I'm not one for I kind of like when my paint's not super smooth at least this paint Okay, so once I have the item ground that I put it in the container and then I Set it aside to make paint from now if you have an item That's fresh That needs to be dried out because you can you don't want to grind up fresh things and stick them in here the mold They need to be really really dry before you do this You can see I got some on the table So if they're fresh you want to Grind them chop them or blend them up now. I have a little bit bigger Grinder for that That I use also when I'm making paper it's sort of a blender for the art room So I take the flowers or vegetables or whatever it is and I put it in there and I grind it up Then I lay it on a cookie sheet With some parchment paper and I put it in the oven at the lowest setting For three or four hours for basically for the afternoon Need a little piece of paper And I just let it dehydrate in the oven Once it's done. I bring it upstairs and I actually don't put it in the container right away I leave it set out at least overnight and Then the next day then I grind it up some more crush it up and put it in a container You can do red onions that way you can do flowers that way So it doesn't have to always be things that you saved and dried they can be fresh Look at that. And so then you just have that and then you just label it in this case garbage flowers The exception to drying things yourself would be something like avocado seeds So in that case You really want to I think treat that as a lake pigment Because you're not going to be able to grind up your avocado seed in a blender That's just not going to happen if you want to try making an earth pigment out of it. You could Maybe crush it up in a Ziploc bag with a hammer outside on the patio I don't know how successful that you would be you'd have to practice But I do the two methods either it's already dry and I grind it up in my grinder or I Smack cut it up smash it up in a blender or something and Spread it out on a cookie sheet and dehydrated it in the oven. Those are the two ways I get my Earth pigments other than it being an actual rock that I crush up Which I also do have so now I'm going to clean this up And I'm going to show you how to take this and try to make paint with it and see if it'll work It doesn't always sometimes you go through the whole process and you get no color from it, but we'll see I'll be right back Okay to make Pigment or paint from the pigment that you just ground Now again, ideally you want to get this as fine a grind as possible something like flour I probably could grind this a little bit more Morderm pestle is a little wet So besides the electric grinder, I have a number of hand grinders And they all work and depending on what I'm grinding I'll pick one over the other more often than not I'll use my Pistol part of my mortar and pestle. I'm assuming that's what the bull parts God called and then I just have a rock This is a rock from the garden. It works really well I Find I can get a better Handle on what's in here. I only do a little bit of paint at a time So I'm going to put a little bit of this in here This is one of those little like you know when you're out at like Costco and your your sample tasting something that they give you a Spoon for that's what that's what this is Anyway So I'm going to put a little bit in there. I'm going to grind it up with my rock And just try to get it a little bit more powdery The longer you do this the more powdery you get it the smoother and finer your paint is going to be and the easier It will be to mix just FYI Okay, that's usually the most I have my patience for So then I'm going to put it out on my this is a glass cutting board I Have this one and I have a bigger one and I've thrifted them I have A muller I got on Amazon I'll link it down below But I have used like flat bottom drinking glasses and stuff before too and they also work So you don't have to buy lots of expensive things This is some watercolor binder because I choose to make watercolor paints with these when I do But you could just take this and add it to an acrylic medium and then use it in a painting You don't have to go through and do water cut by any watercolor Binder this is a shmeaky watercolor binder. There's also recipes on making your own watercolor binder out there I'm the lazy crafter. I've said it before I'll say it again. Lindsay Y Rick is the frugal crafter on the lazy crafter I'm all so I add a few drops of the binder and I'm adding a few drops of Oxcaw liquid because I have it so I've been using it and then I'm going to use the flat bottom of the muller And we're going to just Blend that in like this You don't want to add too much of the liquid at least to start I'm going to have to do some blending and then just keep blending and Yes, those of you out there who have made paint before are going to say you didn't do a finest find a grind on there I know I didn't I seem to like my earth pigments or not mind my earth pigments having chunks in them Personally, I think it gives the paint some character. So I'm all right with that But also if you're making these and you're grinding them and you're storing them And you're not exactly sure if you're going to make paint with them Are you going to? make a die with them by putting them in some hot water overnight or Are you going to add them to an acrylic medium and use it for texture besides the color if you're not sure? I wouldn't grind it up into a powder because you can always do that later. I Would just give it a little bit of a grind and then go from there But a chunk that doesn't want to blend Wants to stay chunky So I'm going to keep blending until I got it as smooth as I can. I won't make y'all watch And I'll be right back once you have it blended up enough Then you want to scrape it off into in this case into a watercolor pan Or you want to use it on your journal or on your painting if it's an acrylic Just like that to accurately see what color we got Look at that pretty brown color That's pretty at least that's what's showing up on the baby wipe Yeah, look at that. That might be a good mix you guys Okay, so we're going to take a brush I've got a scrap piece of paper here. This one is These are lake pigments which will go over in a different video But this one is cedar and this one is actually some I call them curb roses could there just some wild Roses that are on the edge of the curb by my neighborhood This is the one that we just did the garbage flout. Look at that brown That's pretty almost got some green in there Okay, that's a nice color and this isn't even proper watercolor paper. This is just scrap paper. I Like that. I've also found sometimes it if you do That you get a little bit as it dries you get a different color too now you're going to want to test your pigments And keep some kind of a book like I've been doing You will find the two different processes of laking versus earth and using them directly will give you different colors So this these are the ones I've done so far now sometimes I am finding When I'm making the Pigments like this is the wild rose. So is this one But in this one I added some baking soda and it turned this brownish green color The same with this barberry, which is a purple bush. We have in the neighborhood I added baking soda and I got this dark color. So depending on what you and this is red onion So you're going to want to keep some kind of record and some of these you're going to go Okay, I don't know why I bothered with that because that's ugly That has value. I mean that's going to happen. But to find out which ones you do like there's really no other shortcut around it Again, if you're in patreon, they're going to get copies of my notes out of this book Also generally speaking Most of your homemade pigments are probably I wouldn't count on them being light fast they may from what I've read earth pigments are generally more light fast than Lake pigments, but it depends on the material used and I would just say that probably most of your botanicals are not very light fast But I don't have any data on that. I'm sure there's data out there I don't have any it. I'm not too concerned about it If I do create artwork with these that I really really love I will be taking a picture of it and to save and or making a print of it So I would recommend doing that. All right, so this is part one earth pigments So go out there the next time you're out and about Check out the neighborhood check out your environment really look and see what's around you what can you maybe make pain out of or at least try and Let me know what happens. I do have the Facebook group a life of art and self expression If you come up with something interesting, we can have a discussion about it over there Be sure to tag me in your comment You can also become a patron or supporter. We have a private Facebook chat for that we have a private YouTube channel for that and They have lots of communication with me that you all don't have because they're patrons or supporters You also can support the free content by shopping in the Etsy shop. I'm no longer going to be making stamps and stencils So what's over there is it? Right now most everything is on sale and if it's not I have a coupon code. I can send you so just message me That's it for today Play experiment have fun make art all those things and above all go out and have a good day Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys