The original paint — colored dirt and tree sap.
The medium of Byzantine icons and early Renaissance panels.
Sour-milk paint — the medium of barns, posters and Mexican muralism.
The classic American farmhouse paint — simple, breathable, biodegradable.
Pigments mixed into lime, painted into wet plaster — Pompeii, Giotto, the Sistine Chapel.
Candle soot, ground with sap and honey.
Crushed berries thickened with chalk for opaque color.
Three paints, ten minutes, from your spice rack.
Vine charcoal or burnt bone, ground into a wash.
Make your own iron oxide — the oldest red on Earth.
Crushed chalk or oven-dried eggshell, ground to silk.
True blue from fermented leaves, dried into a cake.
The royal red of Aztec textiles and Renaissance robes — from a cactus beetle.
The medium of Van Eyck and Rembrandt — pigment ground into pressed flax oil.
The pit you usually throw away makes a startling pink paint.
Free pigment from the papery skins everyone throws away.
The same dye that stains your hands at harvest, in a paint pan.
A working pH-indicator paint — purple, pink with vinegar, blue with soda.
Brilliant crimson straight from a roasted root.
Tannin-rich acorns plus a splash of iron — a foraged grey-black.
Backyard weeds, simmered into a gentle yellow paint.
Scoop a fistful of riverbank clay — it is already pigment.
A broken brick is fired iron-rich clay — already a finished pigment.
Pluck a chunk of charred hardwood from a cold fire pit — it is pure pigment.
Genuine green dirt — the underpainting of every Renaissance face.
A fingertip of soft white from a chalk outcrop — millions of fossil shells.
Black crusts on bog stones and stream rocks are manganese — a true mineral black.
The bright yellow streak in a fresh roadcut is iron-rich earth — paint it straight.
Theatre scenery and historic interior walls — gentle, breathable, peelable.
The classic brown ink of medieval scribes — made from fallen walnut husks.
The ink of the Magna Carta and Bach's manuscripts.
A brilliant pink from a roadside weed — used in Civil War letters.
The oldest ink on earth — soot from a flame, the recipe of ancient China and Egypt.
Blackberries, blueberries, or elderberries straight from the freezer.
Two of the easiest, most accessible inks in any kitchen.
Sunshine in a jar — from a teaspoon of spice.
A magic ink that changes color with vinegar or baking soda.
Soak rusty nails in vinegar — instant iron mordant.
Three avocado pits give you a surprisingly elegant pink.
Save the papery skins from your kitchen scraps.
Grind a lump of charcoal from the fire pit.
Used for centuries in Persian and Indian manuscripts.
True blue — the hardest natural color to make.
The simplest way in — junk mail, printer paper, old notebooks.
Brown packaging turns into beautiful natural-toned sheets.
Old newspapers give a beautiful dove-grey sheet.
Old jeans become 100-year archival paper — the original Western papermaking fiber.
The traditional Japanese washi — thin, strong, made from inner bark.
Polynesian and Ugandan tradition — bark beaten flat without pulping.
The original 'paper' — Egyptian reed strips pressed into a single sheet.
Dried lawn clippings, hay, or wheat straw into rustic sheets.
Banana stems are mostly throwaway — and full of beautiful long fiber.
The crown of every pineapple is industrial-strength fiber.
After the corn roast, save the husks.
Kitchen scraps + recycled paper = paper that dyes itself.
The Himalayan paper used for Buddhist sutras for 1000 years.
Pressed flowers and leaves trapped inside a clear sheet.
A roadside weed that gives a paper as strong as linen.
Worn-out linen napkins and shirts make the finest writing paper in history.
Pond-edge cattail leaves are free, abundant, and pulp easily.
Garden cleanup in autumn yields perfect short-fiber pulp.
The original Chinese paper fiber — slow to process, beautiful results.
Forest-floor needles cooked into a fragrant rustic sheet.
The bast fiber of milkweed rivals flax — and it grows in ditches.
Stretched and scraped animal skin — the writing surface of the Middle Ages.
A green twig, chewed at the end, becomes a perfectly responsive ink brush.
Roadside-found tail hair (or pet brushings) bound into a real soft-tip brush.
A hardware-store mini paint roller is a perfect soft brayer for the price of a coffee.
The cheap fluffy powder brush at the dollar store is a stunning watercolor mop.
A wooden clothespin clamping a folded scrap of felt makes a stiff stippling brush.
A bamboo skewer or large bird feather, sliced and slit — the original pen.
A scrap of corrugated cardboard, sealed and gessoed, becomes a real painting panel.
Hardware-store cotton duck (drop cloth) becomes painter's canvas with a coat of size.
A sheet of smooth hardboard from the home-improvement store is the cheapest pro-grade panel.
A thin transparent wash of color over white gesso eliminates blank-canvas paralysis.
Cabinet-grade birch plywood gives a luxurious smooth panel for less than half the art-store price.
A flattened juice carton is a perfect intaglio plate — just scratch and print.
A grocery-store meat tray, washed and pressed with a pencil, is the easiest relief block in the world.
Unflavored gelatin and glycerin make a slab that prints like the $30 commercial 'Gelli' plate.
Real lithography on a sheet of soda-can aluminum and a bottle of cola.
A scrap of yoga mat carves like butter and prints like real lino.
The classic beginner build — two thrift-store frames and a square of window screen.
Art-store canvas stretcher bars make a stronger, longer-lasting mould.
A wooden embroidery hoop makes instant round paper.
Any flat tub larger than your mould — no special equipment.
Old wool blankets, towels, or cotton sheets — what wet sheets get pressed onto.
The cheapest press in the world — heavy books and two boards.
A real adjustable press for serious papermaking.
Any kitchen blender will do — but treat it right.
For traditional fibers — kozo, lokta, bamboo, milkweed — a blender won't work. You need to beat.
Where freshly pressed sheets go to dry flat and smooth.
Stackable mesh trays — dry 20 sheets in the footprint of one.
A thrift-store pasta roller is a real intaglio press for the price of takeout.
The oldest method of printing on paper.
Gutenberg's revolution—still alive in fine press shops.
Drawing with grease on stone.
Acid bites the line that ink fills.
Pure line, cut by hand into metal.
Ink pushed through a stencilled mesh.
The workhorse of commercial print.
Microscopic droplets, jetted on demand.
Static electricity, toner powder, fuser heat.
Digital duplicator turned cult art tool.
Blueprints made of sun and iron salts.
The earliest paper photograph.
The most permanent photograph ever made.
Pigment, gum, and dichromate—painterly photography.
Continuous-tone printing without halftone dots.
The classroom and samizdat duplicator.
Photographs made from crushed flowers.
Bonding tissue paper to a print as it's pressed.
Hot wax used to mask paper before staining.
Raised, glossy ink—the business-card classic.
Metallic leaf pressed into paper with heat.
Paper sculpted by pressure alone.
Ink that solidifies under ultraviolet light.
Paper that's printed as it's formed.
Mexico City's people's printshop.
Brazil's chapbook woodcut tradition.
Yoruba cassava-paste resist on indigo cloth.
Cuba's hand-pulled film posters.