If you are tired of store bought paints…make your own.
Being the inquisitive sort of person I am, I recently began researching how oil paints are made. Many of the “old masters” such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh, DaVinci all made their own paints. So, how hard could this process be?
According to this site (image), Apparently to make your own oil paints you need these things:
Pigments , Binders ,
a Grinding slab and Muller ,
a Palette knife , Empty tubes
Pigments
Pigments themselves can be either biological or naturally occurring. Some are even made from the mucus of a type of snail
. Surprisingly, there is a great deal of scientific study behind pigments dealing with the way that light is reflected in certain wavelengths to produce color. In contrast to dyes, pigments are not soluble and require the binder (or drying oil) to assume a liquid quality for painting.
Binders
Binders are generally drying oils which harden to a “tough, solid film after a period of exposure to air.” (according to Wikipedia) After the pigments is sufficiently ground (using the muller and grinding slab), the binder is then added to get the desired thickness to the paint. Too much oil and you have a runny mess, too little and you have dried pigment in a tube.
Then you use the palette knife to insert the paint into the empty tubes to store the paint for future use. As I am one of those people who are prone to wasting paint, I now have a much greater appreciation for store bought paint. I also have a lot more appreciation for the painters I’ve admired over the years in history books.
If you would like to see more detail on how to make your own paints, I’d suggest this site which I used as the image above left. They go through a detailed example with images of someone making paints.
Tags: paint, pigment, painting, colors, color, mixing, art, artist, painter
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