Yesterday, there was much interest in my blog post – Artists, You Can Save Money By Making Your Own Paints. Thanks to all who shared it and re-blogged it.
Today, I am posting follow-up tips on supplying your studio for less.
Containers:
One problem you will likely encounter when making your own paint will be the continual lack of enough clean containers with lids to store your paints. I discovered American Science and Surplus has many plastic and glass bottles in assorted sizes at super low prices. Because they stock surplus items you can even find art supplies as well as paint-making devices such as a mortar and pestal at a fraction of the cost of the same items sold in art supply stores. If they are not in your geographic area perhaps you will find a store like this near you.
How To Make Your Own Pastels
I’ve made lots of my own pastels and have always found it super easy. Even if you do not consider yourself a pastel painter there may be instances where you want to draw with a large stick of pigment onto canvas or paper. You can make pastel sticks to fit your needs and your hand, or even make sticks with graphite powder, charcoal powder, metallic powders or plain white chalk powder. A kilo of the highest quality white French chalk powder retails for as little as eight or nine dollars. Mix white chalk with a dry pigment powder to make a tint of that color. Knead in the wet binder, gum tragacanth–which is easy to find and use. This full description on how to make pastel sticks
Image via Wikipedia
seems a bit much more complicated than I have personally found it to be. For instance, the instructions recommend adding a preservative. I have pastel sticks that I made 4-5 years ago that are still in perfect condition even though I never added any special preservative but used only distilled water and added a little Isopropyl alcohol to the gum tragacanth.
If you have tips for saving money in the studio that you would like to share with other artists feel free to leave a comment.
Great suggestions…Thanks!
Be careful of toxic pigments, in powder form they are easily inhaled.
Yes, all the sites I have linked to in my post have instructions for safe handling of powder pigments. That is why I prefer pre-wetted pigment dispersions in squeeze bottles which I also mention in my post and provide a link to one supplier.