Making Casein Paint: Step 3 – Mulling Pigment

Using the casein binder that I made in the previous post, I am ready to mull it into paint with a couple of pigment colors I have. In the above photo I show my set up. There is an empty 37ml paint tube on the left, a jar of Hansa yellow pigment from Sennelier, and a tablespoon measure. I dump a tablespoon of pigment on the slab, and drop a couple teaspoons of binder (in the jar on the right) onto the powder and start mixing it into a paste. I’m using my new muller here just to try it out, but this pigment is not at all gritty so it really isn’t required. Once I got this smooth, I adding another tablespoon of pigment and teaspoons of binder to smooth down another batch. At this point I have enough to start filling the tube with my palette knife. The tube holds about 3 to 4 tablespoons of this powder and binder mixture, leaving me about 1/2 an inch at the open end to fold over and crimp shut with pliers. Of course, when handling dry pigment, even those that are not considered toxic, for safety reasons you should always were a NIOSH rated mask and latex gloves. These powders are so fine that they can very easily become airborne.

Here’s the finished product, a tube of Hansa yellow, and a tube of red oxide that I also tubed in the same manner. I always test out the mulled paint on a piece of watercolor paper to make sure that the paint handles the way I like. There’s a black mark of ink that I painted over to show the paint’s degree of opacity or transparency.

A note about the slab: most paint mulling kits have etched glass as the working surface. I happened to already have this large textured tile on hand with a thick glaze surface that cleans up very nicely with just a water rinse. Not all ceramic tiles will work well, however. Some are too porous, and harder to clean. I’m also working on top of a plastic drop cloth for easy clean up.

Making Casein Paint: Step 2: – From Gel to Medium

After deciding which pigments to use to make casein paints, I will need a casein medium to bind the pigments. This picture shows a batch that I made a couple weeks ago. On the left is some dry casein powder that I rehydrated into pure casein, and then converted into a gel by adding a small amount of borax. The jar on the right contains diluted gel made into a binder solution for paint by adding 5 times the volume of distilled water. I tend to prefer using raw milk to extract my casein, but I had some in powder form that I wanted to use up. This powder tends to make a slightly darker gel than raw milk, which I’ve written about before, but when diluted and mixed into even white pigment it doesn’t add any noticeable value.

The precise steps I follow to make the gel can be found at my website https://dbclemons.weebly.com/articles.html

Next step will be mixing the medium with pigments to make paint.

Making Casein Paint: Step 1 – Take Inventory

The first step in my process of making casein paints is to determine which colors I need. My stock of paints for this medium has run pretty low on the colors I had previously made myself, but I have several tubes of the old Shiva brand that are still useable. I spread them all out on the floor in groups, and wrote down a list of what I thought was missing for a good range of colors for my palette.

The solid white tubes are paints that I’ve made myself, and I see I have plenty titanium white, one tube each of burnt umber and yellow ochre that are nearly full, but just a little of iron oxide.

I also pulled out some of the dry pigments I had for colors I think I could make: a cadmium yellow medium, hansa yellow, magenta, and a bunch of iron oxide. I’ll get started on those, probably do iron oxide first, and then decide which other pigments I need to purchase. I could use a good red, like pyrrole or cadmium. Benzimidazolone is a good orange, and I see I’m missing some burnt sienna.

Next I’ll make some casein medium by diluting some gel I mad, and start making some paint.

Small Glass Pigment Muller Purchased

My glass muller that I used to make paint got broken in the move to my new home a couple years ago, and I’ve been meaning to replace it. I didn’t have to use it very often, since most of the pigments I bought didn’t need that extra grinding power, so I thought I’d get a smaller (and cheaper) one this time. I found this on Etsy for just around $30. The broken one was about an inch and a half wider at the base, and had a vertical handle, which was a little more comfortable to hold, but I think this will work okay for the limited use I need. Now I need to buy some more pigment…