Preview: Sinopia’s Milk Paint

A couple years back I noticed that the art materials company, Sinopia, was marketing a new product called Milk Paint. Over the years I have seen several companies that sell a casein based milk paint, and they all use lime as the glue catalyst, which can be a problem for some pigments, so I ignored them as I did when I saw this product from Sinopia until recently I took a closer look at the details they gave on how they made their version. Sinopia uses borax instead of lime, which is the same thing I use to make my own casein paint. Borax is much less caustic than lime. When I saw that I decided to order a small sample a few days ago (4 oz. at $9,) and it arrived today. Free shipping in the US was a nice benefit. This is a quick preview of what I saw when I opened the jar.

Sinopia lists ingredients used to make this product that I found a bit unusual. You can see this list of ingredients when you click on their color choices. It includes water, salt, vegetable oils, pine resin, beeswax, chalk, and pigment. It’s the oils and beeswax that I found curious. Despite these ingredients the paint is very water soluble. I did notice that it seemed to dry a little more slowly than regular casein paint made with just casein medium and pigment. That swatch in the picture above took about 15 minutes to set. It also seemed more liquid in viscosity than I expected; although, its opacity covers quite well, as you can see in the picture above where I painted it over a black ink mark.

The only concern I have with it right now is the plastic jar. This is my least favorite form of packaging for paint, since air tends to penetrate inside very slowly, and will dry out the contents much faster than small tubes. Metal cans like those you see for house paint tend to seal slightly better. I purchased a jar of casein gesso that Sinopia sells awhile back that is also in these jars, and about half of it that I hadn’t yet used had dried out in about a year’s time. Once casein dries it can’t be diluted. The easiest solution to this worry is to just use it up quickly. Otherwise, I may try to transfer it to a better sort of container.

Other projects are starting to back up on me, but when I get time I’ll give this a good testing on different surfaces, and see how well it works with other art mediums and tools. It could make a very nice primer.

Preparing Plastic ABS sheet for Painting

In my on going experiments with synthetic surfaces, I recently purchased two sheets of ABS plastic for painting. ABS stands for “acrylonitrile butadiene styrene” and is a thermoplastic polymer. It has multiple uses for such things as computer cases to Legos. It can be run through a 3D printer to make all sorts of things. It can come in almost any color, but is typically available in black or white. In sheet form it often has a rough “haircell” texture on one side, and the opposite side is smooth as glass.

I first heard about this material for artwork many years ago from other artists who liked painting on it. One of those people is my friend, Kim Dow. She told me she gets it in thin sheets, and then has it glued to a foamcore for support. The two I bought are 1/8 inch thick, and 17×21 inches. The price varies online, but these were @ $10 each. The smooth side is sanded down enough to remove the shine, and make it capable to hold paint. I’ve done this in the picture above where you can see the sanded sheet on top. I used an orbital sander with a 120 grit disk which took just a few minutes to get it ready, and then washed off the plastic dust. Use protective goggles and mask so as to not inhale any of that. At this point the plastic has a paper-like feel, and can hold any form of paint, from gouache to oils. No priming is required even for oil, but I added a coat of very thin acrylic primer just to lower the value to a light grey (see picture below.) It’s a little streaky, but that won’t matter.

A new panel ready for paint. I should also mention that you can draw on these too once sanded down with dry media or inks. No priming necessary there either. Now it’s time to start making some art on these.

New Drawing: Art Teacher and Model

Here’s another sketch to show, grabbed from a youtube clip. It’s shows an art teacher and model preparing for a drawing class. I used a pastel pencil, and the page is about 10 x 18″.