Art-Lab Guidelines

Earth, plants, minerals, and other natural pigments have been used in creating works of art across time and places. The natural pigments are non-toxic, simple in their composition, and they produce beautifully permanent artworks. In this project, the art teacher will guide the students in collecting samples of rocks, chalks, and soils of different colors from local springs, farm lands, and other parts of the local landscape for grinding, sieving, and mixing with a binder to create lovely natural colors.

Teacher will discuss with the students that paint has two components, the pigment and the binder. Earth samples, chalks from local springs, and ground rock samples of diverse sources, colors, and stages of formation can be finely ground and mixed with egg white to create tempera paint, some call it poster paint. They can be mixed with local tree gums, if preferred. They can also be mixed with other binders, such as purchased resins, Gum Arabica, carpenter's glue or transparent acrylic. If mixing with carpenter's glue, use the clear type to maintain the natural color of the pigment. This kind of glue has acrylic base; thus, the mixture will produce acrylic color relative to the amount of glue added. The powder could be thickly mixed with some of the binders and rolled out to create chalk pastel, oil pastel, wax pastel or other kinds. Showing a sample from your feasibility study of the project ideas will certainly motivate the students.

Questions the teacher might pose to the students entail:

1. What resources from the natural surrounding have people in our country used for painting, drawing, and dyeing? Can anyone tell me what local resources we can use to make art materials by ourselves, instead of purchasing industrial-made ones from the store?

2. Where can we find the raw materials to make watercolor, inks, dyes, tempera, acrylic, pastel chalk, oil sticks, and brushes?

3. How can the raw materials be transformed to the kind of art material we need to create? Who can give me two examples of natural resources that are art materials in themselves?

4. Can one raw material have more than one use? Can someone give me an example of a raw material that has multiple uses?

5. How best can the art material be used in making artworks?

6. In reflection, what historical, political, cultural, economic, geographic and other contexts may have informed our choices in this project? And does it matter if we share your works with people in other lands?

The possibilities are endless; keep experimenting until you have plenty best results. Dyes can be brewed from nutshells, plant juices, flowers, weeds, wood pulps even insects. For exampled, I experimented with vinegar, and purple onionskins. I added vinegar to the onionskins, let it sit overnight and it produced some reddish dye. When painted on white paper it was same transparent reddish color, at first; it slowly turned pale blue over a 24-hour period. I painted same dye extract on wood panel, only insignificant reaction was observed. The color was reddish with a few areas of pale blue, perhaps, because the wood panel surface was pretreated from manufacture. I have brewed dye from cracked shells of nuts by soaking them overnight in water, then boiling the shells in water, and allowing it to simmer for a total of three to four hours. Different nuts, naturally occurring minerals, and insects brew different colors. Dried and green flower buds, heads, and petals also yield different colors. Dyes can also be brewed from iron rust, snails, beetles, herbs, barks, moss, roots, and fruits.

It will be resource to find out what the traditional dye plants in your country are and other local natural sources of dyes, inks and paints. Use the local knowledge. Some vegetal sources only need to be crushed and fermented for richness of pigment; some come out better cooked. Some pigments are extracted for body painting, coloring wares, and dyeing clothes. Red woods like camwood, carolline, and pedauk yield red pigments. In some culture, the pit of camwood is broken into small pieces and stone ground into pulp and used as cosmetics. The pulp, soothe, and ground charcoal can be mixed with egg white, plant saps, or tree gum to create a range of tempera paint and watercolor. They can also be mixed with wax for Encaustic painting. The mixture can be rolled to create pastel sticks. The finely ground pigment can be mixed with pure linseed oil to yield oil color. Wood of other colors can similarly be broken into bits and ground to pulp to yield pigments, or boiled in water to extract dyes. Attempt to produce a wide range of colors and paintbrushes from the local sources. Paintbrush can be created by finely tying hair on stick with a thread. Small amount of hair on a small size stick yields a small size brush. Excitedly, human, animal, and artificial hair yield different kinds of brushes.

Dyes can be used as one would watercolor. Please, use only plants that are non-toxic. Never brew dye in a pot reserved for cooking meals for human consumption. The basic process of selecting natural resources for creating pigments is direct. Try out the prospective materials by rubbing each on paper; some will yield deep colors. The art teacher will guide the students in the exploration of diverse local resources to create different types of paints, dyes, brushes and possible other art materials. Create a project map connecting all the collecting sites. For the collecting excursion, plot the locations of each collection on the map, so the group could return to the source.

EXTENSION: Gallery Exhibition

The students will not only harness natural resources to make their art materials to create works of art, they will become aware that some natural resources are art materials in themselves. Yes, some natural resources are ready made works of art, perhaps, because the shape, size, or color is beyond description in words. They could have been shaped by the elements into exquisite forms, thus, can be exhibited as found artworks from the natural world. The form can be modified, and different unique pieces combined to create altered works of art, appropriated from the local environment. Both the teacher and student examples may be exhibited. The exhibit will entail the process photographs and sketches, the product art materials and resulting artworks, the project map of the collecting sites, and teacher and student writings on the project. The suggested theme for the student work to be created with the paints, dyes, and inks is "What I Did Yesterday".

The teacher writing needs to include the student-teacher dynamics in identifying the ways local natural resources can be used in art, collecting materials from the local natural resources, and examining their possibilities of use in art. The teacher would describe the types of materials, process of collection, preparation, and uses of the local resources. Teacher writing may explain the modes in which the students interacted with the resources. It may articulate how the learning gains can be maximized next time, and ways refinement of the process-product can be disseminated and managed for the visual arts in the region. The writing may contain the student reflections on the project.

Time Line:
This is an on-going project.

Projector Initiator:
Barthosa Nkurumeh (Artist/Art Educator)