natural paints

Intrigued by the idea of making my own paints I gathered as many natural materials as I could before the frosts made it too late to collect berries for another year. Some materials I simply crushed and extracted the juice, others were boiled in water or vinegar. I used pva glue as a binder to make a basic kind of acrylic paint.

Unsurprisingly the colour variations are quite subtle. candle soot and turmeric were the only really strong tones but with a bit of mixing I covered most colours except green and blue. Concentrated grass juice would probably give a green and that could be mixed with a purple could start hinting at blue?

Natural paints used to create some blatant Euan Uglow still life copies