Into The Black - Easy Charcoal Paint.

It’s been a while since I posted about having fun making your own art materials.

Previously I've showed you how to make two colours of ink from Alder cones, create paint from ground-up local earth and use items found in nature as paint brushes.

Lately I’ve been playing in my studio with home made charcoal paint. It’s all so simple yet deeply enjoyable.

Mark making with charcoal paint, erasers and orange chalk/soft pastel. Image and photograph: Angie Rogers.

I love all the qualities and applications of dry charcoal sticks, lumps and powder but sometimes you just want to work with paint - to move liquid around with brushes, sticks or rags.

• 

  All my charcoal sticks

• 

  Powdered charcoal from the art shop.

The first batch I made was from commercial powdered charcoal for artists manufactured by Cretacolor. Purchased at the lovely Salts Mill art shop in Saltaire, it lasts ages.

I simply spooned some powder into a clean jam jar and gradually stirred in water to make an initial paste. It seemed appropriate to add a couple of teaspoons of liquid gum arabic as an emulsifier and then further dilution with water. But it works with just water.

Nothing was measured, it was all just by feel and look. The result is a lovely very dark kind of paint that dries in interesting ways.

Simple mark-making on paper with purchased charcoal powder mixed with water and gum arabic.

Close up you can see the granulation texture as the paint dries.

Encouraged by this success I decided to try grinding up some 'wild charcoal' - charred sticks made by my friend from local apple tree trimmings. I could see that the sticks were not as evenly burned as the commercial stuff and some of them were more dark brown than true black.

None of this worried me as non-uniformity is to be encouraged. Getting to work with the pestle, it was exciting to watch the Japanese, white porcelain mortar fill up with dark dust.

Whilst the commercial charcoal powder is very finely ground I felt too lazy to spend hours mindlessly pestling away so I guess my charcoal dust remained fairly coarse and I wondered what it would turn out like.

The resulting paint, made as above, dried to a beautiful granular grey, with loads of texture and character. So I call that a success.

The wild charcoal is more coarsely ground and the suspended particles form interesting clumps.

I love the granulated texture formed as the paint dries. It needs layers of spray fixative to preserve.

Yes you can buy ready-made liquid charcoal from art shops but where's the fun in that? You learn so much more about materials when you fully engage with them and make adjustments according to your own personal taste. I urge you to have a go.

There are lots of videos and information about making liquid charcoal on line and I'm not suggesting anything new or innovatory. This is what I did, it was simple and it worked for me.

I used watercolour paper to paint on in these photographs and it does make a big difference to how nice any paint will look - the thickness and texture enhance things.

Whatever paper you use, try to make sure it is reasonable quality and not too thin, unless you are aiming for a special effect on tissue paper or similar and don't mind the cockling.

Please note - dry charcoal powder is harmful to your lungs if inhaled so either work with great care or wear a mask.

If you've not visited Charcoal Prints in my shop recently have a look, there's a growing collection of affordable art that could be just what you're looking for.

Here I've scraped an orange soft pastel with a craft knife to make rusty coloured dust for contrast. The surface has been sprayed at least 3 times with fixative in a can to hold everything down.

You can buy small bottles of gum arabic at art shops as it is used by watercolour painters, or get from online art material suppliers like jacksonart.com  in liquid, powder or solid form.