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The paint industry is a booming marketplace that pulls in millions of dollars every year from young and seasoned artists alike. Dozens of brands stock the shelves accompanied with their own paint, brushes, and canvases that each brag about being the best. Some books tell you your painting technique is wrong; others will tell you there's no technique at all.
Natural dyes take all that noise and throw it out the window.
The backyard is suddenly new and unfamiliar. Paint that doesn't ask for money but to simply be found hides in plain sight: the red dirt, the green grass, the purple berries. The kitchen comes alive with the scents and sounds of the earth as you crumble leaves, break rocks, and steep flowers to discover the colors within. The canvas becomes a reflection of your home as your brush glides across the paper, bringing with it the life found just outside your window.
Painting with natural dyes is a fun, free way to explore and create with the world around you. I'm here to help you begin!
Step 1: Gather your Ingredients
Our world is full of color! Take a step outside and see what ingredients you can find in your own backyard. If you don't feel like venturing too far, just peek at your kitchen! A few ideas to get you started are below.
Step 2: Choose your Binder
A binder helps your pigment stick to the canvas. You can buy a binder from the craft store or make one with the ingredients in your kitchen. Each binder causes your dye to act and look differently on paper, so feel free to experiment and pick your favorite. A few that I've tried are:
Gum Arabic: easy to build layers and dries matte.
Cornstarch & Flour Mix: picks up the most grains for textured paint. Dries matte.
Honey: easy to control the paint and leaves a glossy finish. Also leaves the pigment sticky to the touch.
Whichever binder you go with, add a 2:1 dye-to-binder ratio.
Step 3: Prepare your Dyes
It's time to mash, steep, and stir! For grittier materials use a mortar and pestle to grind them into a powder. For flowers and berries, steep the ingredients in hot water and then strain the juice.
For more textured paint, don't bother with straining your materials at all! This will leave little bits of fruit, flower, and rock on your paper while you paint.
Step 4: Pick a Canvas
The heavier the paper, the better! This will help make your colors pop and will allow you to build layers of pigment as you go. I recommend watercolor paper or cardstock- but you can also try different canvases and watch how the dyes react. Below you'll find the same image done once on cardstock (left) and once on watercolor paper (right).
Step 5: Create!
It's time to make your next one-of-a-kind masterpiece!
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