Turn veg into ink and berries into pigments and create your own slow arts and crafts. The Idler’s gardening expert Graham Burnett shows you how

Rest in peace Carlo Petrini, founder of the Slow Food movement, who left his Earthly plot in May. Let’s keep nurturing the seeds he planted by raising a toast to more permaculture, shared meals and pottering on the allotment. Maybe we can also extend the culture of the slow to other creative practices, making more art from natural materials that we might find in the garden – a revolt into style against the prevailing tide of machine-made AI slop.

My friend Anna Lukala (annalukala.com) describes herself as “a slow artist, invested in the process and mindful practice of growing, foraging, harvesting and tendering, with emphasis on gratitude and land stewardship”. She works with home-made pigments: inks and dyes derived from oak galls, grapevine cuttings, blackberries, walnuts, beetroots, woad, elderberries, nettles, gorse, fungi spores and Thames estuary clay.

Rooted in local bioregionalism and folk traditions, Anna’s workspace in Southend on Sea feels more like a medieval apothecary than a contemporary artist’s studio. Shelves are lined with dozens of glass jars containing dried flower petals, berries and all manner of multi-coloured, earthy-smelling powders and liquids. Freshly dyed pieces of fabric, developing cyanotype prints and sheets of hand-made paper are pegged to improvised drying lines strung across the room. Grinding implements, weighing scales and hand-presses occupy every flat surface, while in the corner mysterious potions slowly ferment in buckets or gently simmer away on an ancient Baby Belling hotplate.

Inspired by one of Anna’s recent workshops, I’ve been experimenting with using what I can forage on the plot or find in the kitchen. First off, I tried a very basic black ink by grinding some home-made willow charcoal from the allotment (see Idler 64) to a fine powder in a jam jar, combining this with a couple of tablespoons of warm water and a teaspoon of gum arabic liquid. This is a natural substance derived from acacia tree sap bought from any art suppliers, and helps bind the ink onto the paper – I’ve also used it in most of the other recipes below.

I’m happy with the results, it’s got a nice granulated texture, but is a little gritty and can behave unpredictably on the page. Then again, it only took me about 15 minutes to prepare – maybe I should have ground it for longer. A deeper, more permanent black ink can be made from crushed oak galls (the hard round nodules made by certain parasitic wasps found on oak tree branches) and iron sulphate, a process involving steeping the galls in water for a few days then adding rusty nails soaked in vinegar to the tannin-rich liquid.

Red cabbage is particularly versatile, producing a whole range of colours. Chop up a quarter of a head, place in a heavy pan with just enough water to cover, bring to the boil then simmer on a low heat for about an hour, checking regularly to ensure the water hasn’t evaporated, and top up if necessary. Strain off the mauve-coloured liquid when cool, reduce it further over a low heat to concentrate and add a tablespoon of gum arabic.

The pigment produced is an anthocyanin – a natural pH indicator – so its colour shifts with acidity, meaning you can generate a whole palette from one cabbage. Adding vinegar or lemon juice turns it pink or magenta; soap moves it through blue toward green; highly alkaline ash from the wood burner gives a beautiful sea-green hue.

The papery brown outer skins of onions produce an intense golden-amber dye. I saved up a load over a couple of months whenever I prepared a meal, storing them in an airtight ice cream tub in the fridge. Once I had a good tubful, I boiled them in water for half an hour or so, strained off the skins using an ordinary kitchen sieve, then reduced the remaining liquid by continuing to simmer for a while longer. This can be used as an ink once cooled, giving a warm ochre colour on watercolour paper, particularly useful for painting darker skin tones. Boiling up the remains again yielded a second, lighter coloured batch. You can make an olive green ink by using red onion skins.

The colour purple was highly prized in Roman times: apparently over 1,400 rare cave-dwelling sea-snails had to be harvested just to extract around a gram of prized Tyrian Purple dye – barely enough to brighten the trim of an emperor’s robe. Why they didn’t just use black elder (Sambucus nigra) is a mystery to me. Pick a couple of bunches of fully ripe berries in late summer, simmer in a little water for 20 minutes or so, then crush with a potato masher or fork. Strain off the pulp and reduce the liquid down to produce a rich blue-purple ink that works beautifully with a dip pen or a brush. Blackberries do a similar job — the darker the fruit, the better the ink.

There are really no limits when making botanical inks and paints, apart from your imagination. You could try nettles, calendula, cosmos, lamb’s ear, lady’s bedstraw or beetroot. A general rule is that if it stains your hands or clothes, it’s likely to make a reasonable ink if you follow the basic steps above (boil, then strain and reduce). Play around and see what you come up with.

Some natural inks require the addition of a mordant such as alum powder to intensify the colour and retain its fastness – especially important if you’re getting into fabric dying rather than paint making. Bear in mind also that botanical inks will naturally fade over time, especially when exposed to sunlight. This makes them more suitable for use in a sketchbook or journal rather than hung on the wall. I store my inks in those tiny single-portion Tiptree screwtop jam jars, which I get from my local independent coffee shop. Being made of organic plant matter, they are also susceptible to spoilage by moulds. Prevent this by adding a couple of cloves or drops of thyme oil to each jar.

Recommended further reading: The Organic Artist by Nick Neddo and Make Ink by Jason Logan.

Graham’s latest book Make Compost, Not Work! – Gardening Columns from the Idler is available from spiralseed.co.uk with a special 10% off for Idler readers – quote ‘IDLER25’ at the online checkout.

This article is from Idler #111.

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