Today I’ll be using the pigment I made a few weeks ago to make yellow paint from thyme. It’s an oil paint. I use linseed oil to make the paints, and walnut oil while I’m working with them. While I mostly left the camera running while I made the paint, I did not remember to stop and take photos. So, all I have for the process is video. I edited and cut it down to about 7 minutes. See below for a list with links to the items I use while making my paint.
Supply List
The links for each item go to Amazon, and they’re my affiliate links. Most of these things are easy enough to source elsewhere with some searching online, if you’re avoiding that source. I’ve bought mullers before from eBay, too. The problem I ran into when trying to do that is the additional cost of shipping. And, I’ve found lately that many things I’ve bought from eBay were delivered to me directly from Amazon after the eBay seller had them drop-shipped. So it didn’t accomplish my goal to use individual sellers anyway.
- muller
- glass plate (a cutting board like I use)
- glass plate (a better quality, actual mulling plate)
- spatula (I break these often, so have been afraid to buy better quality. But better quality might not break so often, so browse the options.)
- tiny jars (I use these for holding pigments, and for watercolor paints between pan-fills. But not good for long-term storage of oil paints.)
- paint tubes
- walnut oil (this isn’t ‘made for paint’, but I’ve been using it and getting it from the grocery aisle at Walmart and it’s been working fine)
- linseed oil (I do use ‘made for paint’ linseed oil to make my paints. I use walnut to thin and work with them on the canvas, for cleaning brushes and mulling plate.)
And you’ll need the pigment. I made a yellow paint from thyme that I’d cut and dried. It grows well in my garden. But the part of the process shown in this video is the same regardless of the pigment you’re using. Next year, I’ll hopefully have some weld growing, too, so I can compare the two sources. Thyme’s pigment complex is supposedly the same as that in weld, an ancient plant used for making yellow dye.
The Mini-Series
In my quest to make yellow paint from thyme, I made videos of the whole process, beginning with the harvest.
- Part 1 shows harvesting and bundling the thyme for drying.
- https://youtu.be/Hr-_q8rZn6E (the one above)
- Part 2 shows stripping the leaves and making the extract
- Part 3 shows how I precipitated the pigment
- Part 4 shows how I make an oil paint with it (that’s this video)
- Part 5 shows me using it on a painting (it will be a while before I make this one)
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Author/Artist Info
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Madison Woods is a self-taught artist who moved to the Ozarks from south Louisiana in 2005. In 2018 she began experimenting with watercolor painting, using her local pigments. She calls them Paleo Paints. In 2023 she began her journey into the world of oil painting with those same pigments. Her paintings of the Ozark-inspired scenes feature exclusively the lightfast pigments foraged from Madison county, Arkansas. Her inspiration is nature – the beauty, and the inherent cycle of life and death, destruction and regeneration. Wild Ozark is also the only licensed ginseng nursery in Arkansas. Here’s the link for more information on the nursery end of life out here.
Online Portfolio
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