Making Natural Ink: The Process and Recipe for Yellow Ink

We are delighted to be stocking the book Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking by Jason Logan, foreword by Michael Ondaatje (Abrams). Jason is the founder of The Toronto Ink Company, makers of fine quality artist’s inks harvested from the streets and trees of Toronto, using all natural pigments combined with food grade Indian shellac and Canadian Shield wintergreen. Read on for two excerpts from the book, including the basic process for making natural ink and Jason’s recipe for Turmeric Alcohol Ink.

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Making Natural Ink: a Basic Recipe

Text by Jason Logan
Photographs by Lauren Kolyn

Here is my secret: Natural ink isn’t that complicated. You can throw almost any pigment-rich base ingredient into an old pot with vinegar and salt, boil it up for an hour or two, add a couple drops of gum arabic, and voila—you have an ink. Think of ink as any coloured water that’s permanent on paper. All the recipes in this book will make 2 cups (480 ml) of ink, or about eight standard 2-ounce (60 ml) bottles. I’ve tried to be as exact as possible with quantities, but keep in mind that the final amount of ink you make will depend on how long you cook your ink and how much liquid your foraged material might contain.

Your goal should not be a set amount of ink but rather a colour and consistency that feels right to you. If your ink is too thin, keep cooking; if your ink gets too thick, add a bit more water. Unlike a fine French sauce, it’s pretty hard to “ruin” an ink. And sometimes a very faint ink, if collected from a very special plant, can become a favourite.

 

Materials

Note: These are the materials I recommend every inkmaker have handy. You won’t need every single one for every recipe, but the more tools you have available, the more techniques you can try.

• Water
• A colourful base ingredient (such as berries, rocks, charcoal, nuts, roots, or leaves)
• Potato masher
• Measuring cups and spoons
• Mortar and pestle
• A pot that you don’t mind devoting to inkmaking
• Spoon or stir stick
• White vinegar (cleaning grade if you can find it)
• Salt
• Thick white paper, for testing
• Gum arabic (a binder you can get at most art-supply stores)
• Wintergreen oil or whole cloves
• Glass containers with tight-fitting lids
• Sticker paper, for labels
• Glass muller or palette spatula, to be used on a glass surface
• Large bowl
• Fine-mesh strainer or colander
• Funnel
• An old coffee grinder (optional)
• Coffee filters
• Funnelglass dropper
• Litmus papers
• Rubber gloves and some rags for cleanup

 

Sterilising Your Materials

Note: Sterilisation is especially recommended for any recipe that requires plant-based materials.

1. Place clean bottles, dropper, caps, and utensils in a large saucepan.

2. Add enough water to cover all the equipment, making sure there are no air bubbles.

3. Bring the water to a boil, and boil rapidly for 5 minutes.

4. Turn off the stove and allow the water to cool completely.

 

Method

1. Prepare the Base Colour Ingredient

For berries: Crush the berries using a potato masher. Add 1/2 cup (120 ml) water and 2 cups (450 g) berries. Then skip to step 3.

For rocks, charcoal, or other dry pigments: Grind 1⁄4 cup of the material down to the finest dust using a mortar and pestle or similar. Add 2 3/4 cups (660 ml) water and 2 tablespoons gum arabic.

For nuts, roots, or leaves: Combine 2 cups (480 ml) water and 1 cup (120 ml) of plant material in the pot as is.

 

 

 

2. Intensify the Colour

Put the base colour ingredient into a large, old pot.

Add 2 tablespoons vinegar and 1 tablespoon salt.

Heat to just below boiling and cook for at least 2 hours, stirring occasionally, until you have an intense ink colour. (Dip a strip of paper into the coloured water to test the intensity.) Remove from the heat and let cool.

 

 

 

3. Filter the Colour

If you have large pieces of plant matter, like roots and leaves, first remove this material with a colander placed over a bowl, with the bowl catching the coloured liquid. For a further level of filtering, place the small end of a funnel into the mouth of a glass container and fit a coffee filter into the funnel. Pour your strained liquid through the funnel slowly. The coffee filter should remove smaller particles, creating a cleaner ink. This step is particularly important if you plan to use the ink in a pen. To keep a pen writing smoothly, you need to use less binder, which can gum up the nib, and filter out any little grains of plant matter. On the other hand, for painters, some texture in the ink may be a positive—you can always refilter it if it seems too grainy.

 

 

 

4. Make It Permanent

Add gum arabic as a binder only after your ink is its desired colour. For each 2-ounce (60 ml) bottle of ink I usually use 10 drops of gum arabic. If you’re using a dry pigment as a base, you’ll need to use more binder (usually 1 teaspoon per 2-ounce (60 ml) bottle). If you plan to use your ink for a pen, try to limit yourself to just a few drops of gum arabic for each small bottle. Add a few drops of wintergreen oil, or 1 whole clove, to each bottle to keep the ink from molding.

 

 

5. Bottle It

Any small glass jar or bottle with a tight-fitting lid can work for storing the ink. Your ink will last longer if you sterilise the bottle first with some boiling water. If you want to get fancy, you can find old empty ink bottles online or save small glass jars and bottles from your kitchen. You can also buy empty 1-ounce (30 ml) bottles in bulk. Label the ink with a sticker, give it a name, and list the ingredients, time, and location of the harvest. The labelling gives your ink meaning and also helps as a reference for later ink experiment comparisons.

 

 

 

6. Test It

A single drop of natural ink on paper will develop a lot of subtleties as it dries, often intensifying as it evaporates and darkening toward the edges. Another level of variation emerges as you test the ink using various tools: ink droppers, pens, nibs, brushes, and even sticks or feathers change the effect of the ink—as do different paper stocks.

 

 

 

7. Clean Up

While natural ink tends to stain less intensely than chemically produced ink, inkmaking can get messy and can stain clothes, countertops, and wooden spoons, so having rags, soap, and paper towels nearby can help keep you and the non-inkmaking members of your household on friendly terms.

 

 

Yellow

“The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.”
—Wallace Stevens, “Study of Two Pears”

My ex-stepmother, whom I call Tutu-Lisa, is a tree farmer in Hawaii. It was on her land that I learned how to peel cinnamon and how to crack macadamia nuts. While there I read a bit about bird feathers as colouring for traditional Hawaiian costumes. She often sends me organic turmeric roots she grows herself; I have been grating and boiling them into ink for the past few years. Sometimes I substitute turmeric powder for the raw roots. While neither are strictly speaking city-foraged, the yellow from turmeric has become a staple colour of the Toronto Ink Company. A couple of months ago I was reading up on turmeric and realised that the colour is way more soluble in alcohol than it is in water. This inspired me to give marker-making a try, as marker ink is alcohol based, and I’ve always wanted to make my own markers. I like to use 98-percent rubbing alcohol from the drugstore, but if you can get ahold of a very high-proof ethanol alcohol like Everclear, or even some kind of intense homemade vodka, that would work just as well. Here, as usual, you will need a glass jar with a tight-fitting lid—this ink can really make a mess. The pigments in turmeric tend to fade over time. In India, where turmeric is plentiful and its colour is highly valued, traditional dyers recognise that this is a living yellow colour and will simply re-dye clothes that are beginning to fade with more turmeric. If your ink starts to fade, why not just add another layer?

 

 

Turmeric Alcohol Ink Recipe

Materials

• 3 tablespoon turmeric powder, or 2–3-inch (5–7.5-cm) roots, peeled and grated
• 13⁄4 cup (400 ml) isopropyl alcohol, 90 percent or higher
• Glass container with a tight-fitting lid
• Spoon or stir stick
• Coffee filter
• Funnel
• Large bowl or tall bottle

 

Method

1. Add the turmeric and alcohol to the glass container and stir. Cover with the lid.

2. Let the mixture sit overnight, then shake vigorously.

3. Pour the liquid through a coffee filter over a large bowl, or alternatively, through a coffee filter–lined funnel into a tall bottle. Then, pour back into the glass container. This ink will keep pretty much forever due to the alcohol content. It does stain, so be careful in making and using.

 

Variations

This same recipe can be made using saffron. For a water-based ink, soak 1 tablespoon saffron in 2 cups (480 ml) water for several days until the water has turned a bright yellow. Discard the saffron bits and strain. For a slightly thicker, shinier ink, you can add a teaspoon shellac or gum arabic to the water as a binder.

 

Use: Alcohol-based inks work great in a blank marker and with other alcohol-based inks. They don’t mix easily with water.

Suggested colour pairings: Alcohol-based inks tend to repel water-based inks and refuse to mix. The effects can be interesting but difficult to work with, so I suggest making a range of alcohol-based colours to pair with your turmeric ink. Try using beets, iris petals, red peppers, or spinach leaves.

Other sources of yellow: Golden beets, saffron, goldenrod, annatto seeds, onion skins, tea, Osage orangewood chips, rhubarb roots, and butternut husks.

Note: A teaspoon of alum (a kind of aluminum salt found in the pickling or spice aisle of the grocery store) added to your boiling pot will intensify most plant-based yellow colours.

 

 

About Jason Logan

Jason S. Logan is an internationally recognised designer, creative director, author and artist. His illustrations appear regularly in the New York Times, and his fine art has been exhibited in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto and the Yukon. His work has been recognised by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, The Society of Publication Designers, the Centre for Social Innovation and the Canada Council for the Arts. His most recent book, Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking, was included in The Guardian’s list of best books of 2018. His next book, How to Be a Colour Wizard, will be published by MIT’s new children’s division in 2023. He is featured in The Colour of Ink a documentary which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival will be in wide release this year. You can follow his ink explorations on his instagram and weekly newsletter.

@torontoinkcompany

 

 

The Colour of Ink

Written and Directed by Brian D. Johnson

The Colour of Ink uncovers the medium’s mystery and power through the eyes of Jason Logan, a visionary Toronto inkmaker. Working with ingredients foraged in the wild—weeds, berries, bark, flowers, rocks, rust—he makes ink from just about anything. Jason sends custom-made inks to an eclectic range of artists around the world, from a New Yorker cartoonist to a Japanese calligrapher. As the inks take on a life of their own, his playful alchemy paints a story of colour that reconnects us to the earth and returns us to a childlike sense of wonder. – The National Film Board of Canada

 

 

Full feature film only available in North America

 

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Text Copyright © 2018 Jason Logan
Photographs Copyright © 2018 Lauren Kolyn

 

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Further Reading

Pigment Stories: Lemon Yellow

A Guide to Inks

Colour Mixing Inspired by Georgia O’Keffe’s Palette

Making Handmade Watercolours With Jackson’s Artist Pigments

 

Shop Make Ink: A Forager’s Guide to Natural Inkmaking on jacksonsart.com