Eco Art: Glob Paints -Gluten Free, Chemical Free, Vegan!

Ya'll.... I am having a freak out! I have found gluten free, chemical free, vegan, food grade, 100% natural PAINTS!!! This is an idea I have been working on diligently for the last 2 years, compiling lists of pigments, experimenting with colors...... only to find someone has already figured out six of the best colors there are and they call them GLOB! Glob made their paint product so safe, you can use it on your body and flush it down the toilet with no environmental or health disasters.
I am so excited about these paint pigments being available that I have been running back and forth across the house announcing to anyone who will listen (cats and one terrified human) that I am going to be a painting diva-tron artist once again!
For my own plans to make pigments like this, I had planned on buying a dehydrator this spring for drying only paint pigments, then would grind them.... most my ideas are also food grade, but some are poisonous plants (like poke berries) we would not want to eat. The Glob Paints in the pic above are totally 100% food grade safe and affordable at 12$ for all six colors.... check out this diddy from their website:::

"You may have noticed that arts and crafts products do not list ingredients. Consumers rely upon "non toxic" certification, believing that their art materials have undergone sufficient testing to ensure the products they use are safe. Don't let these labels fool you.

Art pigments (colors) are commonly made from petrochemicals, and the actual hazards of these materials are not always known. In the US, chemicals that have never been tested for toxicity can be labeled "non-toxic." The rationale? There is no data to prove otherwise.*

Arts and crafts paints are exempt from consumer paint lead laws, and often contain lead, cadmium, and host of toxic ingredients* like formaldehyde (a carcinogen), one of the most common paint preservatives.

New environmental regulations and consumer demand has contributed to the numerous low to no VOC (volatile organic compounds) and environmentally friendly house paints now available.

Unfortunately, the artist market is far behind.

Paints may not only be hazardous to the consumer, but also the environment. Certified "non-toxic" pigments can still be toxic to fish and other wildlife.

GLOB™ products are sustainable and biodegradable, making them safe to wash down the sink and into our water supply.

Go ahead, Glob it on™!"

You best believe, I am going to glob it on... I am going to glob it on everything!

XoXo

Eco Art: Black Charcoal & Egg Paint

Woo! I have another color to add to my non toxic art-senal. Black, one of my long missed dark colors I used to liberally apply on my toxic acrylic paintings back in the day. I have not only missed the color itself but I have also missed the thick goopy opague quality that acrylics gave my art work. Last night I learned how to powder charcoal from the wood stove here, and turn it into paint!

1.Using a rock and a wood surface the charcoal was carefully crushed into a power by rubbing the stone over the charcoal... this was actually fairly easy and didn't take long at all.
2. After powdering the charcoal I took the powder and added it to an egg yolk (just the yellow part of the raw egg).
3. Stirring it together with bamboo stick (you can use a spoon, knife or anything laying around) it immediately turned black and was a thick dark paint ready for use!
I tested a blop on some scrap paper and it was good to go!
I made a paint brush by cutting a small bit of my hair out and tying it to a stick with a rubber band, then applied the paint to this scrap piece of wood (end piece from a lumber mill). The wood was rather rough and my brush was too soft for the rough wood, so the paint could not go on smooth - the surface in which you paint has ALOT to do with how much paint you will have to use and how it will look when applied (same reason why canvas is ghesso'd before use). The thing that was really cool about the black egg paint was you can easily scrape back into it and draw using the 'negative' technique (like scratch board). I drew this simple owl into the paint, while testing out how the egg & charcoal would apply, work, and especially how and if it would dry correctly after!
While waiting for it to dry i smashed some poke berries on the surface and stained the wood with it- using a little water to spread it around. One of the amazing things about the charcoal/egg paint is that not only did it dry rock hard, but it keeps a bit o' shine to it... in other words it does not really dry to a matte finish, it has gleams of light reflecting off the surface. Very cool!
This (new for me) discovery of using powder in egg yokes for thicker colors is awesome... you can most likely apply other natural & non toxic powdered colors like various spices and herbs (turmeric, paprika?) , and I would love to dehydrate native dye plants growing in the woods here and make my own organic egg paints for free with a wider range of colors!
When this project below finishes drying what i want to write above the 1970's looking owl is "Kiss me Stranger". :)
XoXo

Mixed Media Eco Art & Project Fail

Here is my latest eco art project video! It is in a much more primitive style, but only because the handmade paper I recycled from junk mail was realllllly hard to draw and paint on. To make the picture I used charcoal from the wood stove, poke berries, coffee grinds, nasturtium flowers, yellow dock leaves, magazine clippings & pine sap for a 'glue'. The project was already difficult because the paper could break easily if pushed on hard (and i get a lil' rough with my art)- but in the end the project was a total FAIL because i coated it with an oil and wax mixture! The oil turned the paper dark and gray and bled the other forms and colors into each other. I do think wax would be great alone though for the stiffness and lasting quality- especially to seal in magazine collage pieces, which were only stuck in place with the pine sap. :)



XOXoxo

Making Mixed Media Eco Art (With My Mom)

Hey Ya'll! Guess what---> I have a mom! And she likes color, painting and art too. She is in North Carolina visiting from my home town of New Orleans, and brought over some art paper and graphite pencils so we could have craft time together. :)
We turned it into eco art time though, by adding in bunches of natural and non toxic materials to create more elaborate fine art projects.
We added in smooshed poke berries, marigold & nasturtium flower petals, and coffee grounds for paint - we used this with graphite pencils & magazine clippings, then finished them off with a chunky coating of food safe wax (used for some canning processes). My mom was wishing for more colors, especially blue - but I have fallen in love with the bright yet monochromatic selection I have found in nature so far. This was the first time I used old coffee grounds and I love the weak subtle brown I got just from adding a little water to it.
Here are my finished pictures below! I am really excited about how they came out, and now have even bigger ideas for even bigger mixed media paintings, made from completely wild, organic, non toxic, and natural materials.... (I am even working on making my own paper from dumb junk mail- I can't wait to share it with ya'll when it's done.)
Both the scenes I did ended up being nature/ mountain landscape type paintings...
(below are some close up pics so you can see how the wax works over the drawing, collage and painting details...)
I bet Bob Ross would totally love my happy tree! Yay!

XoXo

Natural Plant Dye: Non Poisonous Sumac

Not all sumac is the bad stuff that gives a person a poison ivy like reaction (like this), the sumac pictured here was used by native americans to make plant dyes and even a citrus tasting drink akin to lemonaid. Red sumac, also known as Staghorn, grows all along the roads here and up on open hills- so I rode my bike about a mile from my house to gather some to make non toxic dye with! The highest goal I have for making organic paints and dye is for it to not be poisonous in any way whether chemical or natural (which is the only downfall for poke berries, ya can't eat 'um) - staghorn sumac is one that can even be ingested- so it gets the 5 star award for being totally eco friendly and safe!
I cut the berry clumps off with a knife (the stem is fairly soft but might be hard to break by hand), and I gathered them in a hemp bag. The sumac is self contained, it wasn't bursting open and staining anything along the way. It has a sugary looking substance coating the each little berry.
I put the sumac berries in a pot, with some salt and water. I brought it to a boil and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. I think the more you mush them, the longer it cooks, the deeper a color that can be achieved- even though this most likely will never be as opaque & dark as poke berries or tumeric. As far as I could tell from the consistency it makes a better watery dye, then a paint, but I will keep you posted on that! I did a quick short experiment, just to see if the red-ish brown water would stain an undyed organic cotton shirt.
I was surprised how easy the color took to the fabric, mainly because it looked even darker in the shirt then it did in the pot. It will dry a shade lighter then when it's freshly wet, probably making this a peachy red, with brown overtones. I am impressed with how nice the color came out- but what's even better is the SMELL! This stuff smells yummy, and when it comes to making DIY dye that is a huge bonus! Toxic dyes smell like crap and are unhealthy to inhale, to have against our skin, and the throw down the drain. If someone wanted to try this as an organic paint, it might work best if painting on fabric instead of canvas or paper, using this in combo with other natural dye stains to achieve depth and variations in darkness to light.
Yay, for sumac... more plant dyes to come.
Please share your own natural dye experiments!!!
XoXo

DIY: Non Toxic Litmus (Magic Ink) Painting

Here is where science meets art meets non toxic - three things that don't always go in unison these days. Because I have serious chemical sensitivities I am always looking for new ways to paint & dye without using a single toxic thing, in fact the more edible the better! 7 years of art training in college never once taught me how to make my own supplies, paints and materials and I think it's a tragedy of our modern school system to be taught only to rely solely on consumerism for expression & education. OK, so before I go into an Alice Cooper style "school's out forever" bit... here is a fun experiment with making litmus paper from a purple cabbage and then painting on it with acids and alkalines!!!
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STEP ONE: Chop up a purple cabbage into small pieces and place into a pot for boiling.
STEP TWO: Boil the cabbage in about 2 cups of water or less.
* Note: I boiled mine in too much water because I was experimenting with how much liquid my paper was going to absorb later. In the case of making paintings, the more cabbage and the less water , the more concentrated the solution will be and the more opaque colors you'll be able to create.


STEP THREE: Strain the cabbage, letting the liquid go into a container where you'll be dipping your paper. Save the cabbage for your stir fry later, cause you can eat that stuff ;)

STEP FOUR: Stick your chlorine free paper into the cabbage liquid. We used whatever paper we had around and so each kind took on a different color depending on the chems that may have been applied in the original paper making process - some turned green, some blue, some purple. They all still reacted to the acids and alkalines however - like magic ink! I would recommend using an absorbent chlorine free water color paper for the best results and for longer soaking time. I found that they don't need to be soak for more then 5-10 minutes to really make any difference. Possibly they only need be dipped 30 seconds with a good paper.This is my friend Nikki experimenting with the lemon juice on her painting (her paper was green and the lemon juice turned bright pink!). We made our own paint brushes by using horse hair, a rubber band, and a stick. We also did alot of test sheets and here's what we learned...

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TIP #1 : Let the paper dry before you paint. We were so excited we kept painting on wet paper just to watch it change colors. If you wait for it to dry then your painting won't become a blob by morning.

TIP#2 : Don' let it get wet after. The morning dew distorted some of the lines drawn in - just like a regular watercolor painting, water will reactivate the colors and move them around, usually destroying the image you painted.

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These are some test pieces below to show how it changes colors! Pretty freaking rad! These examples are with all the mistakes made (too much water in the cabbage, painting wet on wet, leaving in the dew, etc...) and still colors were achieved by simply taking a brush and dipping it in different liquids like lemon juice, lime juice, vinegar, & baking soda. The acids created more pink/red colors, while the alkaline creates more yellow/green/blue shades. (As I said above, if the cabbage is boiled in less water creating a stronger liquid, the paint colors will be brighter and more opaque then these examples).

PS- Thanks to reader Liberty for her tip on making litmus paper from cabbages!XOXooooo

(Milk) Paint The Town Red

I have yet to set up my room, you know like officially with decor and a bed (I am sleeping on a pad on the floor still). But I know ya'll wanted to see this rockin' milk paint on the walls and hear all about it, so please excuse the half assed nature of my bedroom. I absolutely love Milk Paint, I love it to pieces, I love it to death, I want to marry it and give it kisses... but that would get weird since it's not supposed to get too wet! Look though, I bought the Barn Red Milk Paint from the Old Fashioned Milk Paint Co. and my good friend mixed it up and painted the room for me. He said it gets clumpy and mixing it wasn't so easy without an extremely powerful drill to put the paint stick on. However, the end result rocks my world.As you can see in the picture above the earth pigmented color is actually very bold and the paint leaves a certain amount of artistic texture - the amount of layers you put on would most likely change this, and possibly the amount of water added could change this also.

The room had previously been an "art" room and had spray paint graffiti, paint splotches and various other stuff on the wall to be painted over - milk paint will go over it, but it doesn't cover it up like the toxic acrylic paint does. It also may cause the paint to run some in those areas- adding various textures to the wall. Personally I love the character it gives, being I am from a generation & culture full of graffiti art. This last pic is a close up of the textures it gives. I want to note that the most brilliant feature of this paint is that it is totally non toxic, it has no VOC's, I came into this room the very next day and had no reaction (which is a miracle), the smell of it was a weird earthy smell (my friend called it a "circus tent" smell) which dissipated within a few days. The paint itself is only three organic ingredients: powdered milk protein, lime and earth pigment! I am going to say the best way to learn about this paint is to go read the testimonials on the website because people give great advice on how to achieve certain finishes and textures and tips on mixing - plus one guy told a crazy story about how his blue milk paint fell into his fish tank and he didn't even clean it up, but not one fish died and the water cleared itself up! I mean, the real question is... Is it all worth the effort to mix and play? YES! Totally. I give 5 stars, two thumbs up and highly recommend it to the chemically sensitive and the artistically inclined.

XOXO

Organic Painting Part 3

This is part 3 in my organic painting series- Using paints made from Poke Berries (magenta) and Turmeric (yellow), which mixed together to make a variety of reds, oranges, and dusty yellows. The brushes are made from human hair tied to a stick with a rubber band and the canvas is paper sewn together and hung with organic cotton on a tree branch.

This is a totally non toxic way to do art, which is much more aligned with today's political and social change then store bought chemical paints which are dangerous to even dispose of. The organic paints are made by boiling the natural substance down for at least 45 minutes with some kosher salt. It needs to be really concentrated with hardly any liquid to get the brightest long lasting hues. Check it out! :)

Organic Painting With Poke Berries and Turmeric

These videos are of the paintings I did with self made organic paints using poke berries (magenta) and turmeric (yellow), a paint brush made with a stick and human hair, paper sewn together for a canvas, and hung with organic cotton from a Red Bud branch. I am super de duper excited about it, check it out!