ldakers
Have you ever wanted to make your own paint? Together with my colleague Maaike Veen – because she also wanted to try it out – In this blog, I will show you how to do it with GERSTAECKER A-pigments – excellent pigments, which are also attractively priced.
There are no in-depth explanations of pigments, binders or techniques, so this is just a simple DIY to show you how beautiful these pigments are and how easy it is to make them.
Why would you want to make your own paint? Well, you’ll never get your paint as technically perfect as ready-made paint. You will have 100% control over what you do – as you can use as much pigment as you like! You can also create colours that no one else has. You understand better how paint works – and therefore in return you will achieve better results when you paint. A bit like you drive a car better when you understand how an engine works. And the most important reason? Making your own paint is mediative, zen and fun!
TIP: We use not only linseed oil as a binding agent, but also casein – one of the oldest binding agents with a unique character and that’s another reason to make your own paint: 100% casein paint is one of those paints that you just can’t buy ready-made.
So why not ➽ try it yourself!
PIGMENTS
GERSTAECKER | A-pigments
We use these three colours here, but you can choose other colours as well:
SYNUS* Scarlet – composition: PR 170 ○ PW 22 ○ PBR 24 ○ PR 101
Disazo sun yellow – composition: PY 17 ○ PY 83 ○ PW 22 ○ PW 18
Berlin blue – composition: PB 27 ○ PW 22
Who is afraid of red, yellow – and blue….
My colleague Maaike chose these colours. The blue – one of the most beautiful, but also one of the most difficult blues – I know, but I’ve never worked with this particular red and yellow before, so I’m curious!
And the mixing colours? The plan is to mix the oil paint with the blue and yellow and the casein paint with the red and yellow. We’ll see what happens!
For example, you can also choose the special metallic colours based on mica (Metallic Flakes). These colours have finer nuances than the usual metallic colours. You can mix them with all other pigments for infinite colour nuances. They are free of harmful substances, lightfast, weatherproof and suitable for all binders.
GERSTAECKER | A pigments – metallic
BINDERS & THINNERS
LINSEED OIL PAINT
GERSTAECKER | Linseed oil
We use 100% pure, de-bonded linseed oil. A thin coat will be hand dry in about 5 to 8 days – dry enough to put on another coat.
Gerstaecker | Balsam turpentine oil
CASEIN
Schmincke | Casein binder – borax decomposed
This ready-to-use variant from Schmincke is already decomposed with borax. You dilute it and rub in your pigments with it – that’s it!
As a diluent we use water, straight from the tap. if you want to work best-practise then you can use distilled water.
TOOLS;
Friction plate/Runner
For oil paints, we rub the pigments with a runner on a rubbing plate:
GERSTAECKER | Runner – glass
GERSTAECKER | Friction plate – glass
TIP: We first roughen both the runner and the rubbing plate with carborundum (silicon carbide), preferably 180 grits.
Carborundum
For the casein paint we use a mortar & pestle:
GERSTAECKER | Mortar & pestle – porcelain
TIP! A mortar & pestle can also be used for rubbing in oil paints. And a runner and rubbing plate can also be used for casein paint.
Furthermore, we also use some handy tools. If you don’t have these, you can also improvise with what you do have lying around.
Pipette ○ GERSTAECKER | palette knife ○ GERSTAECKER | professional paint spatula – stainless steel ○ spatula – plastic
STORAGE;
If you make larger quantities of oil paint, store it in a tube. As long as no oxygen is added, oil paints will keep pretty much indefinitely. You can store casein paints treated with borax for a shorter period of time – a few days to a week – in sealed jars or in one of those modular painting palettes. You will notice when your paint is no longer good – it will start to smell!
SURFACE
OIL PAINT
CANSON® | Figueras® oil colour paper
This paper has an internal barrier that prevents your paint from spilling while ensuring good adhesion. It has a texture that resembles linen – toile de lin – and is nice and firm: it can take it.
CASEIN
GERSTAECKER | Patchboard – 137 Stone
This time we are working on acid-free cardboard in a neutral, calm colour, on which the puddle technique we are going to use will look good – so many things are possible with casein!
Want a different suggestion? These Arte Povera panels are a secret tip!
GERSTAECKER | Painting panel
Paint – just a very brief explanation….
In its simplest form, paint consists of colour – usually in the powder form of pigments – and a binder. There may be additives, to modify the processing properties of the paint. And fillers, to increase the volume of the paint. You dilute paint with a suitable thinner, which evaporates upon drying.
The binder serves as an adhesive, gluing the pigment particles to the support as well as protecting them. Therefore, it is important that the binder is evenly distributed and completely coats all of the individual pigment particles. You do this by rubbing the pigment with the binder.
The binder also makes the paint spreadable – like a kind of lubricator, it affects the colour of the pigments. This is why the same pigment in linseed oil, for example, gives a slightly different colour than in casein or gum arabic.
PREPARATION
Greasing your rubbing board and runner
Your pigments will rub better if your rubbing plate and runner are roughened – regrinded – with carborundum (silicon carbide). It is not strictly necessary, but the rubbing of your pigments is much more efficient, flexible and fast.
In the centre of my new rubbing board – which is still all shiny and smooth – I moisten a mound of carborundum with a pipette of water. With a spatula or palette knife, I mix it into a creamy mass, which I rub out with my runner in circular motions. As my rubbing plate becomes rougher, this rubbing becomes increasingly stiff. Therefore, I add – little by little – more and more water. It doesn’t need to be higher mathematics: you can automatically feel when you need to add some more water!
I occasionally scrape off the carborundum on the bottom of my runner with a spatula and put it back on my rubbing plate. This whole process takes me about 15 to 30 minutes, and quite a few calories, because along the way, the roughening increases the resistance – and that’s exactly the way it should be.
Then I rinse my rubbing plate and runner clean. I collect the rinse water in a tub. I let the slurry settle and I pour off the water or let it evaporate. Or I strain the rinse water with the finest cheesecloth. The water is clean and goes down the drain without a problem. The slurry that remains – carborundum and glass grindings – is non-toxic and can go with the residual waste.
As you can see, my rubbing plate is now no longer shiny – nor is it smooth. Also, the rubbing surface of my runner is roughened – grooved – to exactly the same degree as my rubbing plate! Because of the extra resistance I now get when rubbing, the binder and pigment mix better with each other.
TIP! By first rubbing your pigments with the appropriate thinner – turpentine or White Spirit for oil paint and water for casein – you can predisperse your pigments, if desired, before rubbing them into the binder.
You can also leave your pigments – whether pre-dispersed or not – in the corresponding thinner in a closed jar – to rot, painters used to call it. Be sure to use a clean or disinfected the jar that you seal completely airtight. If you are going to use your pigments for oil paint, you can also pour a layer of oil on top. If you are going to use your pigments for casein, I would take distilled water in this case. That way you can leave your pigments pretty much indefinitely!
Again, this is not strictly necessary, but – depending on the pigments you use – it often works easier.
My colleague Maaike – you know, the one who picked the colours – couldn’t resist and wanted to make paint herself. At the academy she had learned a bit of theory, but hadn’t had any practice. So, she made both the oil paint and the casein paint and I cleaned up the mess – now I don’t know if you’ve ever worked with Berlin blue….
Read her firsthand experience!
I have never made paint before, so I start right away with Berlin blue – one of the most beautiful, but most difficult colours! Anthony had forgotten to put this pigment on the rot. No worries, it can happen. But toning Berlin blue is extremely difficult. Therefore, I first rub it with a spatula and a palette knife with turpentine oil. Be careful, it’s so light that it flies in all directions!
Then I rub it in a pile, make a dimple in it and drop in some linseed oil with a pipette. The exact ratio is hard to specify, but a good rule of thumb for Berlin blue is 4-5 g of pigment to 10 g of oil. And that’s less oil than it seems at first glance, considering how light this pigment is! I start with a little oil and mix it under with a palette knife. Then I rub it on with the runner, using circular and figure-of-eight motions. In between, I occasionally scrape the paint off my runner and the edges of my rubbing board with a paint spatula and put everything back in neatly.
OIL PAINT
I have never made paint before, so I start right away with Berlin blue – one of the most beautiful, but most difficult colours! Anthony had forgotten to put this pigment on the rot. No worries, it can happen. But toning Berlin blue is extremely difficult. Therefore, I first rub it with a spatula and a palette knife with turpentine oil. Be careful, it’s so light that it flies in all directions!
Then I rub it in a pile, make a dimple in it and drop in some linseed oil with a pipette. The exact ratio is hard to specify, but a good rule of thumb for Berlin blue is 4-5 g of pigment to 10 g of oil. And that’s less oil than it seems at first glance, considering how light this pigment is! I start with a little oil and mix it under with a palette knife. Then I rub it on with the runner, using circular and figure-of-eight motions. In between, I occasionally scrape the paint off my runner and the edges of my rubbing board with a paint spatula and put everything back in the centre neatly.
You quickly develop a feel for it, I’ve noticed. Is it too stiff and grainy? Then some extra oil – or turpentine oil. Is it too fluid? Then some extra pigment. But be careful, with Berlin blue, don’t start with too much oil. You have to rub your runner for quite a long time before the pigment particles are well rubbed into the oil. Or before you know it, you have added too much oil at the beginning, then once that oil is well worked in, you suddenly get one of those tipping points where your paint becomes too fluid. Your paint should peak a bit, but not too much.
In between, I test the consistency of my paint on a sheet of oil paint paper. Are all the pigment particles well surrounded by oil? Do they not clump? Is the paint too stiff? Or is it too supple?
Then I throw in another big round of rubbing – 10 or 15 minutes is nothing. The whole process from start to finish – not including cleaning up, which Anthony did – took me about an hour.
And the result? The most beautiful blue I’ve ever seen! my blue besides your blue will be different again as you never get two outcomes the same….
COLOUR MAP
Maaike rubbed not only Berlin blue, but also Disazo sun yellow.
- On the left colour strip, you see the blue – at the top 100% pure, below is mixed with titanium white.
- On the right colour strip, you see the yellow – at the top 100% pure, below is mixed with titanium white.
- On the middle colour strip, you see the mixing colour – at the top is with more blue, below is with more yellow.
CASEIN PAINT
Casein is the main protein found in milk. By adding another substance – ammonia, borax or slaked lime – you get one of the oldest and most stable binders. This process is called unlocking. Think of it as a kind of two-component glue.
TIP: No other binder will do your pigments justice, with all their characteristic properties.
I already knew about oil paint, but I didn’t know about casein paint. This paint in its pure form – you can also make a stiffer tempera with it by adding linseed oil – is so fluid it took me totally by surprise. At first, I thought I had done something wrong, but no… it’d very intriguing!
I work here with a porcelain mortar and pestle. Cleaning is not necessary, because the rubbing surfaces of the mortar and pestle are already rough. But of course, you are free to roughen them up some more.
I put some pigment – SYNUS* Scarlet in this case – in the mortar and add some casein. You need very little; casein is one of the strongest binders. Then I add water with a pipette. You add quite a lot, but actually you can’t add too much water too quickly. Start with 1 part pigment: 1 part casein: 5-10 parts water. I am going to work with a puddle technique and will add even more water later!
Then it is a matter of rubbing well with the pestle, a few minutes is enough. You will see that there will be bubbles in your paint, but they will go away. As an extra I add some charcoal powder. Why? You can read that in the explanation of the colour chart. TIP! I make that powder by rubbing a stick of charcoal on sandpaper.
Now just stir firmly. And done – this took me no more than 5 minutes, max!
COLOR MAP
Maaike rubbed not only SYNUS* Scarlet, but also Disazo sun yellow.
- On the left colour circle, you can see the red mixed with some charcoal powder.
- On the right colour circle, you see the yellow mixed with some charcoal powder.
- On the middle colour circle, you can see the mixing colour on. Top left is with more red and bottom right is with more yellow.
TIP! This colour card Maaike made using a puddle technique. She laid her support – a sheet of cardboard in this case – horizontally. From the mortar, she poured the paint in puddles onto the cardboard. Then, using a pipette, she dripped some more water into each puddle. She carefully tilted the cardboard a little to the left, a little to the right, a little up and a little down. But she kept it more or less flat. Then she let the paint dry while the cardboard lay horizontal, level even. The paint sank into the pores of the cardboard. And the charcoal powder created granulation effects and special hues.
CONCLUSION
I myself have been a pigment freak and an experimentation nerd for years. I was curious about Maaike’s hands-on conclusion ➽ totally loving it – I found myself a new ★★★★★ rabbit hole!
Do you have any questions about this short DIY? Of course, you can ask our colleagues in our stores. But if you use our contact form, Maaike and I can answer them ourselves!
© 2023 – text: Maaike Veen, Anthony Megen & editors Gerstaecker NL | © 2023 – image: Maaike Veen, Anthony Megen, individual suppliers & editors Gerstaecker NL
Add comment