How to make colours or pigments from vegetables and green leaves available , to use them art paintings?

Question

recently my nephew is participating in art competitions on environmental friendly topics. so i want to help her to use some natural colors also which can be made from vegetable matter, for example green from green leaves, etc. i tried making green leaves squeeze but the liquid is very thin and color is very light which is not useful for paintings. how to do it?

Answer 1

Colors made from nature only come in two forms: dyes and pigments. Dyes are usually use for clothing and pigments are usually used for painting. The liquid from vegetables is indeed pigment(chlorophyll) but would have to be mixed with an alum type metal in powered form to work. More commonly, natural pigments are made from plants,minerals and animals,grounded into powdered form,and mixed with a binder(wet sticky substance,such as linseed oil), in order to produce paint. For example, a green from nature can be made by coarsely grinding the mineral malachite(or any of its relatives) and mixing it with a binder. Of course, depending on your materials, this may not be as easy as it sounds.

Good Luck.

Answer 2

Natural Pigments are usually powders made from fine particles of a crushed substance, and for pigments from living matter often the slower you dry them the better they keep their original colour.

You could try grating or shredding the leaves then allowing them to dry before grinding to a powder, or perhaps simmering in water for an hour or so before reducing the mixture down. For earth pigments cook the oil in the oven for an hour to dry and sterilise it, before mixing with a carrier.

If you use a dry pigment you will also need some sort of carrier/binder, and egg tempera is a traditional and environmentally friendly way to do this. Tempera is a mix of egg yolk and pigment, often with the addition of a small amount of oil and vinegar (oil helps the paint "spread", vinegar helps it to dry). I added a link below for some recipes, but you could just use egg yolk and pigment with a drop of vinegar to help it dry and preserve. this mixture should be kept in the fridge and discarded after 3 days, otherwise you will end up with a rotten egg smell!

The advantage of this is that the Tempera will also carry and adhere relatively large particles of pigment, which is helpful if you dont wish to grind everything for hours.

:-)