How do you make ink from plants or any other natural material?

Question

Painting material but must be made at home or from materials that can be found easily.

Answer 1

Here are several things you can try:

To make colored ink:
Squeeze juice from various berries, (I found dark cherries and blackberries works the best) and mix white vinegar in it. Add about 1/3 of the volume. Do not use store bought juice, as they contain added sugar. You can get pink/red, blue, and violet dye.

Collect some onion skin, pour some water over it and boil it for about twenty minutes. Take out the onion skin and continue to boil until the color has darken. Mix it with vinegar and you get yellow dye.

Squeeze the juice from spinach and filter it, and mix it with vinegar.

To make black/white paint:
Take some charcoal and grind it as finely as pissible. Mix it with just a dot of glue and some water. Add more water if it is too thick, add more charcoal if it is too thin.

Take natual talc or powered plaster of paris and mix it with a dot of glue and some water, use it at once.

To make any of the above ink into paint, mix a pinch of starch and some glue to it and heat just enough to thicken it, do not over heat.

I developed some of these myself, others I got from old recipes.

Answer 2

You do not want to make or use a dye if it's to be used for art (printing, drawing, etc.) because it will suffer from low light-fastness.

If you want to make your own inks you're better off creating your own pigments. Pigments are created from a varity of sources and must be finely ground into powder form. Then these pigments must be preserved with a binding medium.

But instead of me getting into a lot of detail here I'll just offer you some links that will help explain the process better.

Natural India Ink has been around and used for something like 4,000 years or more, by the way.

Answer 3

Most plants will make a natural dye when boiled in water. You can find books in the library that can tell you about natural dyes. To set the color, say in wool or fabric, you need a "mordant"- Those are things like copper or alum.
Some ideas about dye sources are things like leaves, walnut shells, bark, etc.
These colors are not light fast and often don't take to a dark shade when used as a dye. So be prepared for soft colors.
You might try watercolor paper because it is used to being wet. And if you go to the art supply store, they may be able to advise you on products that will keep the dye from spreading while you're waiting for it to dry.
You can buy walnut ink in a dry, crystal form. I used it for a class I taught on Lewis and Clark- the kids used quills and practiced writing with the ink. It was fun and interesting.