Nature DIY Part 1: Poke Berry Paint and Dye

Poke Berries are a deep purple blackish colored berry growing on the Poke Weed which are totally beautiful and totally poisonous berries. I would not use them for dying clothing, but today I wanted to dye my hemp shower curtain and when I realized it was making an awesome magenta color dye, I made another thicker batch for paint!

This pic above shows you what the Poke Berry looks like, I cut about 10-15 bunches like this to gather enough pigment for the dye.
I was rather lazy about the dying process this time (unlike my last post with plum skins, which I did completely following directions) - I dropped the poke berries in the (not for food) pot, filled up enough water to fit the fabric in, then added about a half cup of kosher salt.
After bringing this concoction to a boil, I let it simmer and set for about 30 minutes (the longer it simmers the better your dye will be). I then added the 100% hemp fabric for my shower curtain to the Poke Berry dye! Check out the rad color!
I then realized this would make a awesome watercolor paint, so I gathered about 7 more bunches of poke berries and added them to the old poke berries from the dye to be boiled again with only a small amount of water. (The hemp fabric & dye had been poured into another bucket.) Now if you are loving the Poke paint, but are like WTF? about my paint brush in the pic above... that is because I made the paint brushes too- which I will tell ya'll about in Part 2 Nature DIY~!!!
Just like traditional watercolors you can get variations of pigment by adding water to the thicker Poke Berry paint, which I tried to illustrate in my quick & somewhat creepy flying shark sperm shaped monster pet with eggs painting. :)

Do you use natural paints? Have you ever experimented with henna or mud painting? Please share your secrets here!