diyprint — Sabrina Rosina

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Of course you can experiment with any kind of paint/material to make prints. Here I want to share a recipe which dives even further into bark-studies: a bark-based pigment to make your paint from.

This requires only a handful of ingredients which you either already have at home or can find at the pharmacy. The recipe is quite time-intensive and needs several days to fully process.

Here are the simple steps:

clip the collected bark with some pruning shears in small bits
cover the bark-chips with water and let them soak for as long as possible (several days)
next blend the mixture as fine as possible
boil the mix and let it simmer for 1 hour
measure your solution: how many ml do you have? We are pretending to have 200ml for this recipe, please adapt to your own quantities
while the mix simmers, prepare an alum (potassium aluminum sulfate) solution:
in an extra pot, get 10 tbsp of alum with 10 tbsp of water to boil until the alum dissolves
add the alum-solution to the bark-mix and let simmer shortly
the next solution to prepare is 1 tbsp of washing soda in a small cup of water
now take a third, high pot or bowl (no more stove needed) and transfer the bark-mix inside
add the soda-solution drop by drop (!) and stir in between
it should foam a lot – stop adding soda when it’s ALL foamy
stir from time to time and wait it out until all the built foam has settled again
when the mix has separated in sediment and liquid again, it’s time to strain it
use a paper coffee filter to strain the mix – this will take some time
as soon as the liquid is all drained, cut the filter open and lie it flat down on a surface covered with newspaper or old cloth (will be permanently stained)
let it dry over night
break the pigment free from the filter and grind it even finer to your liking or leave it like it is - you can store the pigment like this in a jar for years
to make paint from it you need some liquid gum arabic
add pigment to it until you have a desirable consistency
ready to paint