Making Paints out of Food - National Saturday Club (2024)

by Rosemary MacLennan

Making paints out of food!

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Overview

Throughout history, from Prehistoric cave paintings to Renaissance artists(who would mix ground pigments with egg yolk or white to create different types of paint such as tempera and glair), natural materials have been used to create images.

More recently, artists have used natural materials to create paint.Yelena Popova, uses soil and wood ash.

Using food means that you can experiment with materials that you have at home!

Materials needed

• Paper- whatever you have to hand, watercolour and thicker cartridge work well but you might try printer paper, graph paper and old packaging
• Brushes – thinner ones if possible. If you haven’t got brushes, think about other things that you can use to make marks, for instance sticks, co*cktail sticks and biros
• Food! Whatever you have in the cupboard. In the tutorial, I have used; tea bags, onion skins, ground coffee, blueberries, turmeric, blackberries and paprika. You could also try beetroot, saffron, red cabbage or spinach. You don’t need to use a lot of anything, and you don’t need to make more than two pigments. You might come up with others, too. They need to be watery and the sort of foods that will stain!
• Pencil
• Ruler, or something that you can use to draw a straight line
• Jam jars/mugs of clean water

Activity part one – Creating your pigment

Add a small amount of hot water to any of the foods that you have to create your ‘paint’. You don’t need very much water and you don’t need very much of the food.

You are aiming to get as much colour from the food without too much water, so when using tea, try two tea bags and just cover them with water- you aren’t making a cup of tea! Below are examples of the quantities that I used.

How about onion skins?

To use onion skins, you will need to use the hob to heat the skins in a little bit of water. I used the peel from 1 onion.

Heat them on a medium heat for about 7 minutes. Make sure the water just covers the skins and that you don’t leave the pan as the skins will burn.

Try out the pigments

Once you have created your pigments, try them out to see what shades you can achieve. You can vary the shades by adding more or less water.

The colours will evolve as they dry, so make sure you note down what food you have used to make the colour.

Now you have your ‘paints’, on to creating your design!

Activity part two – Creating a Constructivist-inspired artwork

Contributed by Rosemary MacLennan, Nottingham Trent University Art&Design Saturday Club

Rosemary MacLennan is the Co-ordinator and Lead Tutor of the Saturday Art Club in the College of Art Architecture Design and Humanities.Rosemary took over as the coordinator and tutor of Saturday Art Club in 2015. During this time, she has worked with Arts Council Collection, Yorkshire Sculpture International and a network of over fifty universities and arts organisations.In September 2019, Rosemary delivered a talk at the V&A to the Saturday Club tutor network onEngaging young people.

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