Ink Alchemy

An attempt at making my own ink

It was around 10:30 pm on Friday night when I stumbled upon the documentary film, The Colour of Ink. I do this often – get done with artwork for the day then look for a documentary to wind down with. I’m at a point where I’ve seen 95 percent of comic book/cartoonists documentaries, so now I’m looking for any film that includes the word “art”.

The Colour of Ink is a fascinating one. It chronicles the adventures of an ink maker as he travels the globe looking for various ingredients to make beautiful colored ink. He then gives them to various artists, where they use the inks and discuss the results. The visuals are stunning, and the concept is eye-opening. So eye-opening that I started Googling “how to make ink” on the inter-webs. Turns out that the basic recipe isn’t too complex, and so…

I made a weekend out of it and made my own inks.

Well, at least attempted to and lived with the results. Brace for alchemy…

I started off by selecting my main ingredients. I noticed in the documentary that the ink maker used a good bit of berries, so I ran to the grocery store and grabbed some black raspberries, cranberries, and white grapes. I also found a recipe that dealt with tumeric, which is supposed to yield a very vibrant yellow. I thought about using a few ingredients that I had laying around the house, like walnuts and spinach, but I decided to stay limited for my first time and stick with these four.

I also had to run to Michaels to grab some gum Arabic. This is a binder – it’s used to thicken liquid so that it acts more like paint. Beware if you decide to do this on your own, this stuff is a little pricey.

I started off with the raspberries. I threw them in a pot with some water and alum and waited for them to boil.

As they started to boil, I dipped in a piece of test watercolor paper. I initially got excited because the purple color was very vibrant, but I quickly realized that the color cools down when the temperature drops. I also had a bone to pick with the recipe as it didn’t call for enough water. After the 15 minutes of boiling, I mashed the berries then transferred them to a strainer, but the clump of fruit was way too dry to yield any ink, so I had to add water at the last second. The formula was compromised.

I mixed in the gum Arabic then transferred the ink to a small container. The result was more like a purple ink wash - still usable but only as a base for a larger painting, or if you just want a very subtle color for your piece. I was glad that I could actually paint with the ink, so that’s something…

Next were the cranberries. I think that this concoction acted most like ink out of the bunch. My levels were closer to “correct” here, but I also think that cranberries yield more water than raspberries, so that helped with the extraction. Again, the result wasn’t too vibrant, but a little better than the raspberries, and it can still be used in a more subtle approach to a painting. This was my favorite of the four.

The white grapes acted much like the raspberries and ended up being my most disappointing out of the bunch.

Lastly, the tumeric. This process was a little different. You just take hot water, put in the tumeric, then let it simmer for about an hour. Extract and add the gum Arabic. This yielded a nice yellow. If done better, I could certainly see how tumeric could yield a vibrant color.

After I bottled all the colors, I did a quick landscape piece. As you can see, the colors are very cool, and they fade a good bit after application. If this is the mood that you’re after, I think there’s some good stuff to work with, although unpredictable.

This was a really fun experiment. I think that the key step in making ink is understanding the balance between the water and the ingredients. You need to add enough water to yield ink, but not so much that it will suppress the color. There’s a perfect balance somewhere, and that’s sort of beautiful. It will just take practice to find it. I’m sure that there are some better recipes out there, too. Also, there’s an option where you can use honey in place of the gum Arabic. I’d like to test this out!

So, will I quit buying ink and watercolors at the art supply store? No, not any time soon, nor did I expect to. Will my next comic smell like grape jelly? Probably not, but that would be cool. The process does take a bit of time, and the unpredictability of the result is a little jarring. I will say, if you crack the processing code and manage to get consistently satisfying results, this can be a cheaper option. Some colored ink is very pricey. If you stock up on the binder, fruit and heat aren’t too costly. Oh, and you could literally go for a hike and grab some dirt, colorful leaves, or rock dust and use them as ingredients.

There’s some really cool experimentation in ink making, as well as a certain prideful feeling that you get when crafting your own product. I’ll definitely take another stab at it soon and see if I can get better results. As they say, teach a man to fish…

Gotta go, I have a bunch of cranberries that I need to chow down before they go bad. Or should I make a massive batch of red-pinkish ink?

Until next time.

Thanks for your time,

Nico