What are paints made from now? What are paints made of? How to “reanimate” acrylic paints

Homemade paints

The material will be useful to parents, teachers, and additional education teachers.

The history of colors probably began with the advent of man. Drawings of primitive people made with charcoal and sanguine (clay) have survived to this day. Cave people drew on the stones what surrounded them: running animals and hunters with spears. Medieval artists also prepared their own paints by mixing pigment powders and fats. Such paints could not be stored for more than one day, since upon contact with air they oxidized and hardened.

Homemade paint recipes:
1. Recipe.
1 tbsp. spoon of flour, 2-3 tbsp. spoons of salt, 50 g of water with food coloring, 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil. Mix all ingredients and beat until thick sour cream. The binding element of these paints is oil. The prepared paints are very similar to gouache.

General information
These paints are widely used and are used for drawing, coloring drawings, diagrams, posters, etc. Watercolor paints are produced in tiles, in porcelain or other cups, or in tin tubes. Watercolor paints are diluted with water and are always ready for use. Diluted, dried paint does not deteriorate and can be used again.

To prepare these paints, you can use mineral, aniline and vegetable paints. Aniline dyes are rarely used, since, when absorbed into the paper, they stain it through and through, as a result of which they cannot be washed off the drawing and weaken the tone. They also do not wash off from the brush.

Recently, mineral paints have been used almost exclusively, since they are cheaper and more durable than vegetable paints. The preparation of watercolor paints comes down to the fact that crushed paints mixed with water are mixed with a binder and the resulting dough is placed in tubes, cups or molded into appropriate cakes.

Gum arabic, cherry glue, candy sugar, gelatin, fish glue and others are used as binders. The best types of paints are prepared using pure gum arabica, sometimes adding a small amount (20 to 40%) of candy sugar. A mixture of gum arabica with light wood glue or dextrin is also used, and these substances are taken in a wide variety of proportions.

Mineral paints used for making watercolors

White paints
The best material is white lead. These varieties contain a fairly large percentage of heavy spar. The highest grade of lead white is “Kremzerweis” - tiles of snow-white color. Zinc white is also suitable for preparing white watercolor paint. This white is zinc oxide. The highest grade - "Schneeweiss" - is distinguished by its lightness and whiteness. In addition to these materials, heavy spar and chalk can be included here, but these materials produce paint of very low quality.

Yellow paints
Kron yellow - chrome-lead salt. These paints come in various shades: lemon, orange and others. They have a significant drawback: they change their shade in sunlight. Regarding crown, you must also remember that it cannot be mixed with paints containing sulfur (ultramarine, cinnabar). Yellow carmine, cadmium sulfide, ocher, etc. are also used for yellow paints.

Brown paints
Siena soil, Kassel soil, Cologne soil, red lead, umber, etc.

Red paints
Lead minium is a red powder. The highest grade is “Mignorange”. Cinnabar is mercury sulphide. Natural cinnabar is bright red in color. Its shade depends on the degree of grinding; the finer the grind, the lighter and brighter the paint. Available in various shades.

Carmine is a dye of animal origin. Insoluble in water, easily soluble in ammonia. In addition to these paints, Viennese cormorant, mummy, etc. are also used.

Blue colors
Ultramarine. Recently, artificial ultramarine has been exclusively used. In trade it comes in the form of a powder from dark blue to light blue. Fine grinding produces light tones.

Prussian blue blue. It is found on sale in the form of tiles or pieces of dark blue color.

Indigo is a vegetable dye, but can also be obtained artificially. It is a mixture of several coloring substances, of which the main one, which produces a blue color, is indigotine. It is sold in the form of dark blue pieces with a copper-red tint.

Green paints
Green paints are obtained by mixing yellow and blue paints, or use verdigris (the best is French; verdigris is poisonous), crown green, chrome green, cinnabar green, ultramarine green, etc.

Black paints
Burnt ivory, lamp soot, etc.

General instructions for preparing watercolor paints

To obtain paint of one color or another, mainly mineral paints are used, as indicated above. The desired shade can be selected when purchasing raw materials, or you can get combinations of paints of different colors. Paints that have a very intense bright hue can be weakened by adding some white paint to them.

The main point in production is the careful grinding of paints. It must be borne in mind that most mineral paints are insoluble in water, and the dyeing process is like a mechanical attachment of the smallest parts of paint to paper. Many types of commercial mineral paints come either in pieces or in powder that is not finely ground, and therefore require careful grinding to prepare watercolor paints.

Depending on the size of the production, grinding into powder is carried out using runners, ball mills, special paint grinders, or manually in a stone mortar. The finer the grinding, the better quality watercolor paints are obtained.

The binders used are gum arabica, candy sugar, gelatin, fish glue, etc. The choice of binders can vary widely, but the highest quality watercolor paints are made with pure gum arabica mixed with sugar or honey. Usually take 2 wt. tsp gum arabica and 1 wt. tsp sugar. Lollipop solution and dextrin solution are also often used. For carmine paints, only a candy solution is used; for chrome paints and emerald greens, a dextrin solution is used.

The amount of binder required for different mineral paints varies widely. Paris blue requires an amount of binders (gum arabica and sugar) equal to its weight, Prussian blue, Siena earth require smaller quantities. Lead white and black paints require even less. Small quantities are required for yellow and red ochres, red lead, cinnabar and zinc white, and very little is required for brown Kassel and Cologne earth.

By mixing the paint with an aqueous solution of a binder, a dough of clay-like consistency is obtained, which is laid out on a marble table or on a table covered with wax paper. The mass should be rolled out to a thickness of 5-8 mm; leave it alone for 12 to 20 hours, after which it is molded with special molds. The stamp is lubricated with some kind of oil. Forming begins when the dough is sufficiently dry. Forming can be done in two steps, that is, first, using a stamp or knife, cut the dough into appropriate tiles, then, when the latter have hardened sufficiently, press them with a copper stamp to give the appropriate shape and trademark. This last method is practiced more often.

Completely hardened and molded tiles or circles are glued to the palette with light wood glue or fish glue. Glue in the form of a warm solution is applied to the palette with a small brush and a circle of paint is immediately applied to this place.

In mass production, you can make a brush in the appropriate places with tufts of hair. With the help of such a brush, with one touch, glue is applied to the palette in accordance with the places where the paint circles will be glued. When preparing watercolor paints in cups, the resulting dough is placed in appropriate porcelain or other cups. Their binders are the same substances, but honey or glycerin is added to them. These paints are easier to dilute with water.

For paints in tubes, gum arabic or dextrin with the addition of significant quantities of honey are used as binders. For 1 weight tsp gum arabica take 1 wt. tsp honey. Honey is used liquid and non-crystallizing. Instead of honey, glycerin is used to reduce the cost.

When preparing cheap children's paints, they use chalk or talc, tinted with aniline paint in the appropriate color and mixed with one of the above-mentioned binders. Bricks or circles are formed in the usual way using copper stamps.

Below we provide individual sample recipes for preparing the highest grades of watercolor paints, but we repeat that other coloring and binding substances can be used to obtain paints.

Watercolor paint recipes

Intense black
130% lamp black is boiled in 1 liter of water; Having taken the vessel from the fire, remove the foam that has floated to the top from the liquid and add 4 g of finely ground indigo. The resulting mixture is boiled with constant stirring until most of the water has evaporated, after which 4 g of gum arabica, 2 g of wood glue and 0.5 g of chicory extract (optional) are added.

The resulting mixture is boiled until it turns into a thick paste, which is then formed into tiles or tablets using molds greased with oil (the best oil for this is nut or almond oil).

Blue paint
33 wt. Parts of finely ground Prussian blue are boiled for some time in soft water, to which a few drops of hydrochloric acid are added. When the paint has settled, drain the liquid and mix the sediment with 16.5 wt. parts gum arabica and 8.5 wt. parts of glue, pre-dissolved in a small amount of water; evaporate the mixture under moderate heat until a thick paste is obtained, which is formed in the usual way. When preparing indigo paint, add a certain amount (depending on the shade) of lead white to the latter, grind the resulting mixture very thoroughly, and then proceed as indicated above.

Red paint
Grind 30 wt. tsp Viennese cormorant, carmine, cinnabar or red lead with 10 wt. parts gum arabica, 4 wt. hours of powdered sugar and 6 wt. hours of water into a homogeneous thick mass. If the mass turns out to be too thick, add a small amount of water.

Yellow paint
Prepare according to the red paint recipe, using yellow mineral paints and slightly smaller amounts of binder.

White paint
Thoroughly grind the white (Kremnitsa) first in a strong solution of gum arabica to the consistency of a soft, homogeneous paste, and then a second time in a solution of gum arabica, thickened to the consistency of mucus. The resulting paste is air dried and then shaped. You can also dry the paste in molds.

Green paint
8 wt. Parts of verdigris are ground in milk and heated at a temperature close to boiling for 24 hours, adding 2 wt. h strong wine vinegar and 4 wt. tsp powdered cream of tartar. After settling for 24 hours, pour the liquid into a bottle; By mixing the liquid with indigo, saffron, and green paint from buckthorn berries, you can get paint of any shade. Gum arabic and glue are used as a binder, which are added until a thick dough is obtained.

Honey paints
Mix 6 wt. parts gum arabica, 3 wt. tsp powdered sugar, 30 wt. h. mineral paint of any color, 6 wt. tsp honey and 5 wt. hours of water. Everything is thoroughly ground and mixed.

Vegetable paints
Purple. Ripe blueberry juice, squeezed from the berries, is boiled in a clean vessel, a glass of vinegar and 20 g of alum are added, filtered and the filtered liquid is evaporated in a porcelain cup to the proper consistency.

Yellow
Boil yellow plantain berries in 0.5 liters of water, add a small amount of alum and 10-15 grains of table salt (rock), after which the resulting mixture is evaporated to one quarter of the volume, filtered through a canvas and gum arabica is added to obtain a thick mass, which is molded.

Dear readers, in this article we will tell you about watercolor painting, its composition, types, writing techniques and innovations in the field of painting with this material.

Characteristics of painting using watercolors

Watercolor is painting using water-soluble transparent paints.

Its properties are airiness, lightness, subtle color transitions.

Watercolor technique combines features of graphics and painting. From graphics, watercolor took the key role of paper and the absence of a relief stroke; from painting, it borrowed the construction of forms and space with color, the presence of multiple tones.

Basically, watercolors are used to paint on paper. While working, you have to moisten it with water very often. The characteristic blurry stroke can only form on wet paper. There are different ways to wet it. The paper can be stretched onto a special frame and then moistened. It is also laid out on wet flannel or glass. The degree of wetting directly depends on the desired result. Often artists use other methods.

To ensure that the water is completely absorbed into the paper, it is recommended to leave small puddles on its surface. Thanks to this, various effects can be achieved.

Watercolor composition

Watercolor paint consists of a coloring binder pigment (dextrin and gum arabic), a plasticizer (invert sugar and glycerin) and various additives. Without using a plasticizer, the paint would quickly become brittle and dry out. By adding an antiseptic substance - phenol - the appearance of mold is prevented. Another extremely important additive that is added to prevent paint from beading is ox bile.

Types of watercolor paints

There are two types of watercolor paints: “school” and “art”.

School watercolor paints Professional watercolor paints

School paints are significantly inferior to art paints in terms of dispersion, even layer, possibility of glazing and light fastness. But the most important thing is to be able to use them. A real master can create a masterpiece using the most ordinary school paints.

New: watercolor pencils

Watercolor pencils have recently appeared on sale. You can draw with these pencils in two ways: first, paint the desired area, and then blur it with water, or wet the paper and then draw with pencils. Thanks to the second method, you can achieve a more saturated and vibrant color.

Watercolors are artistic paints based on vegetable glue, soluble in water. It lays down in a thin translucent layer, which is its feature. Watercolors were first created in China in the 2nd century AD. Watercolors are painted on special watercolor paper, which differs from the usual thickness, density and texture; soft brushes are usually used - squirrel or kolinsky. Before applying watercolor to paper, it is diluted with water; after drying, it can be stored for quite a long time.

WHAT IS THE ARTICLE ABOUT?

Composition of different colors

Do you know what watercolor paints are made of? For their production, aniline, mineral and plant components are used. However, the aniline substance is used least often, since it gives a stable, rich color, saturating the paper through and through, without being washed out by water, which eliminates the most important feature of watercolor paints - translucent application.

One of the most common components is mineral. Its advantage is durability and low cost. So, to make watercolors, crushed color pigments mixed with water are combined with a binder and the resulting mass is packaged in tubes, cuvettes or pressed into a cake shape.

Fish or cherry glue, gum arabica, candy sugar, gelatin and others are used as a binder for all components. The highest quality watercolors are made with the addition of gum arabica, sometimes with an admixture of candy sugar (from 20 to 40%), as well as wood glue or dextrin in various proportions.

Different types of minerals correspond to a specific shade of watercolor.

Lead white with a large amount of heavy spar admixture gives a white color. The snow-white shade is obtained from the highest grade lead white - Kremzerweiss.

Yellow color is made from crown yellow - chromium-lead salt, and yellow carmine, ocher, cadmium sulfide, etc. are also used. These paints vary in shades from light yellow and lemon to rich orange and ocher. The peculiarity of yellow paints is the change in shade in sunlight. If the watercolor is made on the basis of crown, it should be taken into account that it cannot be combined with paints that contain sulfur, i.e. with blue shades.

Red shades are made from lead minium - a mineral paint that has a bright red color, the highest grade is Mignorange. The finished shade of watercolor depends on the degree of grinding of the particles: the finer, the brighter the color.

The color red is also obtained from carmine. However, its origin is not mineral, but animal, which gives this paint a specific property - insolubility in water.

Shades of blue are made from artificial ultramarine. Its shades range from sky blue to dark blue. The lighter color comes from the mineral components of the fine fracture.

Also Prussian blue blue is the basis of blue watercolor paints, its color is dark blue.

Indigo is a dark blue color with a copper-red tint, perhaps of mineral or plant origin.

Green shades are obtained by mixing blue and yellow paints or they are made from crown green, verdigris, cinnabar green, chrome green, ultramarine green, etc.

Manufacturing process

How are watercolors made? The process of making watercolors begins with selecting the desired shade of mineral paint. You can choose it from ready-made raw materials or by mixing several colors. If the shade is too saturated, it is weakened by adding white.

The most important point in production is the thorough grinding of mineral raw materials. Since mineral paints often do not dissolve in water, coloring occurs due to the attachment of paint particles to the paper surface.

• Primary mineral raw materials are produced in pieces or coarse powder.
• Next, the mineral paints are crushed in a paint grinder, runners, ball mills or a stone mortar if it is made by hand. The finer the particles obtained, the higher the grade of watercolor paint.
• Then the resulting mass is combined with a binder, for example, gum arabic. So for the red color, made from carmine, only a candy solution is suitable, and a dextrin solution is used for emerald green and chrome color.
• The amount of binder depends on the mineral raw material; white and black colors require it the least, and ocher shades require the most.
• After combining the mineral paint with an aqueous solution of a binder, a clay-like dough is obtained and rolled out to a thickness of 5-8 mm, after which it is left to dry for 12 - 20 hours.
• If the watercolor is subsequently packaged in a tube, then in addition to the binder, non-crystallizing liquid honey or glycerin is added.
• Depending on the release form, liquid watercolor is packaged in a jar, semi-liquid watercolor in a tube, solid watercolor in a cuvette or tile.
• When the watercolor has hardened enough, it is formed into the chosen shape. The finished mass is cut into appropriate pieces and glued to the tile with wood glue or fish glue.

Second cooking method

Glycerin is poured into the reactor with additional binding elements. Next, a coloring pigment is added to the bowl (special bowl), and the entire resulting mass is mixed for a certain time. Then, in a thin stream, the watercolor blank enters a paint grinding machine designed for a specific color and is ground. Next, the mass enters vats, from which it is poured through special hoses into a packaging machine, where the colors are packed into ready-made containers for sale, and then the watercolor is dried for two days.

An example of making blue paint

Prussian blue mineral paint is finely ground, combined with water and hydrochloric acid, and then brought to a boil. After which the paint settles, the excess liquid is drained. Gum arabic and glue, which is previously dissolved in water, are added to the resulting mass and heated at a measured temperature until a paste of thick consistency is obtained.