Who says you need fancy art store mullers and palettes and palette knives to make your own okay-ish paint? Too many people.

Here, we have a glass buttplug with the bottom ground down using wet/dry sandpaper to make it flat and slightly abrasive. That one has only ever been used for paint making. It was 1/10 the price of a decent muller and it’s about… 1/3 as good.

My palette knife is an old library card and my mixing surface is the glass tray from a broken microwave. Total cost: $15.

This paint is an extremely dark purple, nearly black, made using the lake pigment method with blueberries. I achieved the dark, rich colour by using 99% ethanol for my solution, rather than water, and adding boric acid. It’s a watercolour that will dry solid but remain water-soluble, made with pigment, glycerine, honey, gum arabic and clove oil.

About paint:

Most commecial paints use minerals and the by-products of decomposing metals for pigments because they’re much more colourfast than plant-based colours. The quality of a paint is usually related to how much pigment it has in relation to binders, and sometimes fillers, that’s why cheap paints take so many coats to cover a surface. It’s why expensive paints vary wildly in price depending on the colour, too.

I use as much pigment as possible, adding just enough paint solution (the resin-coloured stuff in the little jar) to mix and grind.

Binders are important because straight pigment will dry and flake off the paper or canvas. Gum arabic, the resin from acacia trees, has been the most popular binder in paints for centuries. You can make gummy bears with it, too.

Edited: words for spelling.