If you can cook, you can make paint. Just be aware that what you're doing is learning, and be ready to get creative when you reach an obstacle on your path.
Your mistakes will not be terribly expensive, so relax and enjoy! Just try to remember not to taste the paint.
Here's the recipe for Quark and Borax Putty that I've been using. I love it! I've already learned that if you start with any given medium, you need to keep with the same formula and not switch up or you might run into problems. Although it can be refrigerated, fresh is best so I make this in small batches. When I keep it, I mark the container with psychedelic green duct take so no one will try to eat it. I wouldn't reccomend keeping it longer than a week, refrigerated.
It just behaves so much better when fresh.
Quark and Borax Putty Medium
1 t borax dissolved in 1 T skim milk ; set aside
1 lightly beaten egg white
1/3 C walnut oil, preheated for 48 hours in a crockpot (this makes it dry faster!)
Slowly pour the oil into the eggwhite, beating constantly. This will create an emulsion. Set aside.
1 T quark
Add borax and skim solution to quark; mix well. Actually, this is another emulsion! Twice as nice.
Add quark and borax emulsion to egg and oil emulsion.
Now get busy adding marble dust and stirring it in. You will probably use a cup or more, depending on your desired consistency. A ventilating mask is reccommended for safety. This stuff goes through several phases as marble dust is added, but I like it when it looks and acts like mousse!
For the first layer, I color this putty to a middle value with ochre and slather the whole thing over a wooden panel, trying to make it as even as possible. When dry, it retains a subtle texture; if this bothers you, it's easy to sand the surface. You can also work into the surface with a sculpture tool if you enjoy working with slight relief. This material resembles a chalk board; it's very absorbent. After it dries, you can even draw on it with your home-made pastels!
This amount of medium will easily cover at 16" x 16 " panel.
Let it dry overnight, at least. You will see a slight change in color as it dries. Work on it only after it is dry. It's up to you how you want to proceed from here; you have a tabla rasa!
My next phase is to add dark areas to indicate an underpainting, using walnut oil and homemade oil paint. Once I know where the darks go, I'm ready for another batch of putty. For the next batch, I repeat the above and do not add the ochre to the whole batch. I keep half the putty the near-white color I get with marble dust. I add pigment to the other half to bring it to a terra cotta color. I blend the two colors on the surface, creating areas of light, dark, and values in-between.
When the underpainting is complete and dry (overnight, again!), I get brave and add home-made oil paints to walnut oil to make a colored glaze to paint over top of the light putty areas. If you have any experience working glazes, you will see the potential the putty medium has to retain a slight tooth on the surface of the painting. Oil glaze will drop into the indentations in the surface; after partially drying, the highest areas of the painting can be brought out with a light buffing in areas that you choose to highlight. Gotta love glazes!
Your mistakes will not be terribly expensive, so relax and enjoy! Just try to remember not to taste the paint.
Here's the recipe for Quark and Borax Putty that I've been using. I love it! I've already learned that if you start with any given medium, you need to keep with the same formula and not switch up or you might run into problems. Although it can be refrigerated, fresh is best so I make this in small batches. When I keep it, I mark the container with psychedelic green duct take so no one will try to eat it. I wouldn't reccomend keeping it longer than a week, refrigerated.
It just behaves so much better when fresh.
Quark and Borax Putty Medium
1 t borax dissolved in 1 T skim milk ; set aside
1 lightly beaten egg white
1/3 C walnut oil, preheated for 48 hours in a crockpot (this makes it dry faster!)
Slowly pour the oil into the eggwhite, beating constantly. This will create an emulsion. Set aside.
1 T quark
Add borax and skim solution to quark; mix well. Actually, this is another emulsion! Twice as nice.
Add quark and borax emulsion to egg and oil emulsion.
Now get busy adding marble dust and stirring it in. You will probably use a cup or more, depending on your desired consistency. A ventilating mask is reccommended for safety. This stuff goes through several phases as marble dust is added, but I like it when it looks and acts like mousse!
For the first layer, I color this putty to a middle value with ochre and slather the whole thing over a wooden panel, trying to make it as even as possible. When dry, it retains a subtle texture; if this bothers you, it's easy to sand the surface. You can also work into the surface with a sculpture tool if you enjoy working with slight relief. This material resembles a chalk board; it's very absorbent. After it dries, you can even draw on it with your home-made pastels!
This amount of medium will easily cover at 16" x 16 " panel.
Let it dry overnight, at least. You will see a slight change in color as it dries. Work on it only after it is dry. It's up to you how you want to proceed from here; you have a tabla rasa!
My next phase is to add dark areas to indicate an underpainting, using walnut oil and homemade oil paint. Once I know where the darks go, I'm ready for another batch of putty. For the next batch, I repeat the above and do not add the ochre to the whole batch. I keep half the putty the near-white color I get with marble dust. I add pigment to the other half to bring it to a terra cotta color. I blend the two colors on the surface, creating areas of light, dark, and values in-between.
When the underpainting is complete and dry (overnight, again!), I get brave and add home-made oil paints to walnut oil to make a colored glaze to paint over top of the light putty areas. If you have any experience working glazes, you will see the potential the putty medium has to retain a slight tooth on the surface of the painting. Oil glaze will drop into the indentations in the surface; after partially drying, the highest areas of the painting can be brought out with a light buffing in areas that you choose to highlight. Gotta love glazes!