Creating paint

To explore the Indigenous culture when approaching the art, I wanted to create my own paints after doing much research into the resources often used within the Indigenous culture. A lot of contemporary artist materials are derived from many Indigenous resources such as acrylic, charcoal and others.





When exploring the idea of using natural paints, I decided to take a trip to the beach and see what natural materials I could find to make into paints. When I was there, I found a lot of shells and soft rocks to make into paint and used the pulling end of the hammer to mine into the soft rock, finding the cores of certain rocks to be bright orange like copper or clay.




When I'd collected all of my resources, I headed home where I ground up the different rocks to see what different colour paints they could make and tried mixing them with different things to the base colour.








I found that when I mixed the ground up rock with too much water, it became almost transparent and didn't hold together very well on the page.




However, I also tried mixing the ground rock with egg and found that although it mixed together well in the mortar and pestle, when I applied it to the page, it was not a whole colour and was too transparent, something I've found a lot even when PVA glue is used to make paint.

 


Over all, I feel that the most successful rocks were the two bottom rocks which created solid colours that stuck to the page when I applied them instead of turning transparent. I also feel that they were the most vivid colours, and relate to my ongoing theme of the vibrant culture of Indigenous people.




This rock created a dull and almost transparent colour of paint and when I applied it to the page, I feel that it was unsuccessful in forming a solid colour which brings me to the conclusion that I will not be using it again.














This rock created a murky beige colour that formed a solid colour efficiently and was soft enough to grind into a paint. I feel that this rock was successful in giving me a solid colour and would consider using it again in the future.









This rock produced a dark auburn or amber colour after grinding it and adding a slight amount of water to it. I feel that this was the most successful rock to grind into paint as it was softer than the others and I found it easy to grind. The rock produced a colour that was both vibrant and earthy which relates to my concept of reconnecting with nature and feel that I would definitely use the rock again.