No paint at home? No problem! You can make dyes and paint at home using vegetable scraps and fruit. In one of my previous videos, Drawing with Glue, I showed you how to use condiments like turmeric, paprika and cinnamon as pigments, today we’ll be using food!
** Be sure to have help from a grownup because there is some boiling water involved**
I have included the link to download a wonderful picture tutorial from http://meyamo.com/ that I followed to make these dyes.
I didn’t have any powdered sugar, so I left that out. This gave me a paint that is very close to watercolor and I was able to use the same techniques I use with watercolor paint.
Supplies –
- Orange carrots, purple carrot, frozen beets, blackberries and lemon
- Watercolor paper – you will need sturdy paper. If you don’t have card stock or watercolor paper, I suggest gluing a few pages of copy paper together or gluing copy paper to a piece of cardboard. This will prevent the paint from soaking into the paper completely.
- Paintbrush – I also used a make up sponge!
- Paper towel or napkin
- Straw
Steps –
Click on this link and follow the directions to make your dyes/paints – Meyamo_Handmade_Fruit and Vegetable_Paints
This is a great use for any older fruits and vegetable scraps you have. You can also use any jars or plastic containers you’ve been saving or have in the recycling pile to store your paint for future paintings.
The concentration of color depends on how much water is added to the fruit and vegetables. Although the color may be very light at first, it does dry darker and once your first layer of paint is dry you can add more to make your color more vibrant.
Make the straw painting by dropping puddles of paint on the paper with a brush or spoon and blowing the paint around, producing some really abstract designs.
Adding salt to the wet paint will give you an interesting texture. See how the texture changes by adding more or less. Once dry, brush or tap off the salt and see what your texture looks like.
If you don’t have any paintbrushes, you can also use a cotton ball or a make up sponge! This sponge gave me 3 sides to get interesting prints from.
As you can see, there are many ways to experiment with your natural dyes. What other kind of natural paint has been used throughout history?
Here are some links to more resources about that –
Tune in on FB and Instagram on Saturday when I’ll be reading “The Rainbow Goblins” and sharing art techniques using simple tools.
Thanks for visiting and keep creating!
Patty
artoutofanything.com 
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