How paint is made. Watercolor paints

If you, as a responsible and caring parent, want a happy childhood for your child, add more bright colors to it. And begin the comprehensive development of your child, study science from the cradle, read useful books, go for walks and travel. You will find a lot of useful information on the pages of Happy Science.

And today I will tell you how to make safe eco-friendly paints for your child at home. I assure you that the paints according to my recipes are no worse than branded, expensive analogues. And don’t even doubt its safety and environmental friendliness: the basis is only natural ingredients that can be bought in your favorite store. Well, you're ready, then you'll meet.

The largest selection of homemade eco paint recipes for your child

How to make finger paints for your child in 10 minutes

And let's talk, first of all, about paints for the little ones - FINGERS

It’s easy to make safe and bright paints at home.

Save the recipe so you don't lose it.

DIY bathroom paint recipe

Paints for painting in the bathroom today are quite expensive and not everyone can afford them. And you will have to get rid of paintings painted with paints, for example, of Chinese origin, for a long time and purchase expensive cleaning products for this. So, if your child loves to paint in the bathroom, I invite you to write down a simple recipe and make DIY paints with your own hands.

To create thicker paints that your child can use with their fingers instead of a brush, place all the ingredients except the dyes in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over low heat and turn off immediately. Such paints do not spread.

How to make voluminous paints for children (Puffy Paints) with your own hands

Have you already painted with Puffy Paints with your child? I hope you and your child enjoyed this pop up paint. If you don’t yet know how to make these push-up paints from simple ingredients and delight everyone with interesting drawings... Welcome to my mini master class.

You can paint with these paints only with cotton swabs. And this is a new, unique experience. Draw and color large coloring pages. And to make the colors rise, microwave your work of art on high for 30 seconds. Or for 2 minutes in the oven. Set the temperature regulator to 180 degrees. Be careful that the sheet does not turn over and that the paints warm up on all sides and swell well. And within a couple of minutes after cooling, the paints will become hard, voluminous and will not crack.

Let me tell you how to make body art paints with your own hands

An interesting, bright, exciting and mega creative activity for your children, not even for five minutes - body art. You shouldn’t make your eyes wide in surprise, like “HOW?” Easy, fun and creative, friends. Children love to draw. And they will enjoy painting themselves no less. Believe me. Better yet, at the first opportunity, give your child the opportunity to rejoice, indulge and have fun from the heart. And now I will tell you a simple recipe for miracle paints for body painting. I recommend drawing with them when you play in the children's pool or in the bathroom. It turns out great for children's body art.

Our readers will likely notice that this recipe is similar to a non-Newtonian fluid. Maybe, but we will be applying paint to the body, so be prepared for color mixing.

For mixing, you can use any convenient container with a wide neck. And for the brightest game, a paint tray is perfect, from which you can scoop up paint with a cotton swab or brush.

They wash off easily, thanks to baby shampoo, and the skin does not dry out, because the paint contains baby cream. The child will enjoy washing himself and cleaning the bathroom after a massive mess.

A simple recipe on how to make stained glass paints with your own hands

You can allow children to show their imagination and paint on glass not only for the New Year. And in general, you can paint with stained glass paints on any glass surface and even on transparent files. And there is absolutely no need to buy expensive kits, because you can make your own paints at home.

Sparkles add a special piquancy to the colors. You know, the ones they use for manicures. You can also paint using a stencil. And if you draw on a file, then after it has completely dried, peel off the drawing from the file and glue the stained glass window to any smooth surface - glass, mirror, tile, etc.

For those who like large-scale projects, I have a special offer: make gel paints for painting at home.

Making these paints will not cause you any trouble and will not take much time. Just prepare larger containers. Because you can draw on huge pieces of whatman paper. These paints are also suitable for painting in the bathroom, and they will be easy to wash off. But first, paints need to be made. This is what we will do now.

How do you like this option of paints for super-scale painting? This is especially popular with us. You can add shine and put sparkles in gel paints. Such as nail design masters use. Drawing begins with the finger, then the palms are used, and then the multi-colored heels sparkle on whatman paper. But our journey into the fascinating world of colors does not end there. And I prepared the most delicious for last.

Would you like to add the recipe for yogurt finger paints to your treasure chest?

The most difficult and interesting thing about this recipe is that there are no exact proportions. And these paints are the simplest, most natural and safe. They are made quickly, easily and simply.

These paints are perfect for early development. And the drawings will undoubtedly be real masterpieces.

What are the benefits of paints? They help develop:

• fine motor skills,
• hand coordination,
• dexterity and finger strength,
• color perception,
• imagination,
• speech.

They also help your child develop:

• artistic taste,
• creative thinking,
• independence.

Fun Science wishes you fun, creative activities with your child. Practice various drawing techniques, teach your child to mix colors, distinguish shades, and calmly create your first artistic masterpieces.

Few people know that for most types of paints, for example, watercolors, oils, gouache, tempera, the same material base is used, which has not changed for many centuries.

We all probably remember our first paints on watercolor bases in rounded molds and with a long brush. Many have tasted watercolor paints and could not do anything about the habit of testing the brush on the tongue, like a pencil. But, alas, watercolor paint cannot be eaten, despite the fact that it contains a certain amount of honey.

The main components of all paints are pigmented particles and binders.

Depending on what main component the paint will be mixed with, you can say what it will end up being, gouache or watercolor. Although the pigmented particles of all types of paints are the same, like drops of water. Paints were invented in such ancient times that the name of the inventor simply disappeared into the stream of time.

Our ancient ancestors ground soot with burnt clay, mixed it with animal glue and created their immortal rock paintings using the resulting colorful composition. They painted the walls of their caves with clay and ocher paints, and these drawings have survived to this day!

Over time, paint compositions became more complex. Man began to add mineral, stone, and clay powders to them, and invented many chemical additives. Despite progress, there are artists who prefer to work with paints made using ancient technologies. These are modern icon painters and restorers. To recreate old icons and paintings, they need paints according to old recipes.

They grind paints with their hands, in their workshops there is a lead mortar, in which malachites are ground into dust for transparent green color, grape seeds are ground for black color, red paint is extracted from the mercury mineral cinnabar, and blue paint is obtained from lapis lazuli.

The color variety of paints grew and multiplied with the invention of new technologies.

In modern paint and varnish production, pigmented particles are used on mineral and organic bases given to us by Mother Nature, or artificially derived materials. For example, natural ultramarine from the very expensive mineral lapis lazuli replaced its synthetically produced “namesake.”

People have been painting for more than a millennium. You can verify this by going to any exhibition of ancient art or studying the catalog of ancient rock paintings.

If there is a drawing, then there must be paint with which it was painted. But how did the ancient people, who decided to capture their complex, primitive life, get it? However, the answer lies on the surface. Surely the ancient people noticed that many berry crops had good coloring ability, and they decided to use this quality. In addition to the plant palette, primitive man learned to use clay, soot and several mineral pigments available to him for his creative needs.

The first painter in human history experimented on a grand scale. His first and main goal was to have his work preserved longer. Therefore, the paint must be durable and long lasting. And for this you need a binder. This role can be assigned to clay, animal glues, or an egg. By the way, egg yolks are still used in the manufacture of paints as one of the connecting links of the paint system.

To diversify the color range of the first paints, people used ocher and umber.

Any paint consists of four fundamental components. This:

• Coloring pigmented particles.
• Main binder.
• Solvent additions.
• Filling materials.

All of these components have their own unique effect on various paint parameters. Much has been said about pigmented particles, so let’s move straight to the binder.

The following are often used as a binder:

• natural or animal glue,
• natural resin,
• hydrocarbon compounds soluble in liquid media,
• solid oil products,
• polymer additions.

This entire gentleman's set serves as a film former in paints. It is they, as the paint material dries, due to their binding characteristics, that cover the surface being treated with a durable layer that retains pigmented particles and fillers in the paint material.

Solvent additions are necessary to reduce the viscosity of the paint, which simplifies the work with the brush and makes it convenient to apply the paint to the work surface. Solvents are chosen in conjunction with the binders used in a particular type of paint. Mainly:

• aquatic,
• oil,
• alcohol,
• ketones,
• ethereal,
• other hydrocarbon compounds.

Fillers are added to paint formulations to modify texture and enhance matte finish. It is impossible to imagine the production of heat-resistant paint used in pottery workshops and various paintings without filler materials.

Tempera paint

It is based on a water-soluble emulsion, which replaced the yolk mixture used in old times in traditional icon painting. For large volumes of tempera paint production, casein additives are used in combination with artificial polyvinyl acetate resins.

Tempera-based paints are distinguished by the fact that they dry extremely quickly, changing the original tonal and color parameters. However, its strength and durability are beyond any doubt. Paintings painted with tempera paint are an art created for more than one century.

One of the most common paint systems. It has been produced for several dozen centuries, because the Chinese figured out how to make watercolor paint at the same time as paper. Europeans learned about it only at the beginning of the second millennium AD.

The basis of watercolor paints are:

• Natural gum arabic.
• Plant resins.
• Plasticizing substances.
• Glycerin or granulated sugar.

Such basic materials give watercolor paints a unique lightness and transparency. In addition to these main components, watercolors indispensably include antiseptic substances, the same phenol, and that is why watercolor paint should not be part of our menu.

Gouache paint

In terms of its constituent components, gouache paint is similar to watercolor. In gouache, the main violin is also played by pigmented particles and a water-soluble adhesive-based component. But unlike watercolors, gouache is enriched with natural white. This makes it a little tighter. In addition, as the paint dries, it lightens and gives the surface a delicate velvety feel. Paintings painted in gouache or watercolor are particularly vibrant and vibrant.

This paint is mixed with drying oil, mainly linseed oil that has undergone a unique technological processing. The composition of oil paint also includes alkyd resin additives and drying solvents, which ensure the paint dries as quickly as possible. Oil-based paint appeared on the European continent in the very middle of the Middle Ages, but the name of the person who managed to invent it cannot be established.

The remains of drawings made with oil paint based on poppy and nut oils were found on the walls of caves in which the first Buddhist monks lived, and boiled oil paint was used by residents of Ancient Rome. Oil-based paints do not change color characteristics as they dry, and have amazing depth and brightness of color.

If you compress the pigments of linseed oil, you can get oil chalk. If you do the same pressing process with wax-based paint, you get a beautiful wax chalk.

Pastel paint is also made by pressing, but no oils are added to it. New technological developments have made it possible to significantly expand the range of paint products produced.

The color selection of paints has also diversified; today there are several thousand shades of all colors, which was impossible to achieve with old production methods. However, the pigmented system based on mineral and organic bases, developed many centuries ago, has remained virtually unchanged even in the context of rapidly developing technological progress.

materials on the topic

The production of metallic silicon by the Titan Group was previously planned to be organized in Omsk. Nevertheless, the city population defended the right to a safe environment. Today, residents of Novouralsk are against the construction of this plant in the Southern Urals. Over 30 thousand people signed the petition.

Modern manufacturers face a big challenge when developing paint and varnish products, and one reason may be that paint samples simply give them the opportunity to evaluate the flow of the dispersion in the reaction tank. Now researchers from Fraunhofer are collaborating with Potsdam PDW Analytics GmbH for the first time to continuously monitor the production of varnishes, paints and adhesives in real time and thus design a more efficient method for paint development.

Old books often contain the names of exotic dyes: red sandalwood, quercitron, carmine, sepia, logwood... Some of these dyes are still used today, but in very small quantities, mainly for the preparation of artistic paints. After all, natural dyes with such beautiful names are obtained from plants and animals, and this, as you understand, is expensive and difficult. But natural dyes are very bright, durable, and lightfast.

It would be interesting to check. But how? Logwood grows in South America, sandalwood grows in South Asia, sepia comes from cuttlefish, carmine comes from cochineal (tiny insects)...

And yet it is quite possible to obtain natural dyes even at home, even in the middle zone of our country. And in the plants we are familiar with there are coloring substances, although not so bright and not so persistent. Our ancestors often used them. Let's try to extract dyes from plants, and then based on them we will prepare water-soluble paints, known to everyone as watercolors. Naturally, the dyes that we will finish off must dissolve well in water.

We will prepare all the dyes in the same way: we will grind the plants or any parts of them and boil them in water for a long time to obtain a concentrated decoction. It should be quite thick. We don’t need to extract the dry dye - after all, we still have to prepare water-soluble paint.

A very important note: only take plants that are legal to pick where you live; Do not under any circumstances tear up plants that are protected in your region or republic. And in any case, in order not to harm nature, limit the number of plants collected to a minimum.

Let's start with red dye. It can be obtained from the stem of St. John's wort (the decoction must be acidified) or from the root of bedstraw. You may not know what these plants look like. In this case, consult a biology teacher or take a reference book or plant guide from the library; As a rule, they contain both descriptions of plants and their drawings.

Place alder bark in water for several days, and then prepare a decoction. Once again you will have red dye. It can also be extracted from the roots of horse sorrel, but in this case, do not forget to add a little aluminum alum to the finished decoction - otherwise the color will be dull.

From the roots of the famous elecampane plant (it, like St. John's wort, is a medicinal herb) you can get a blue dye. To do this, the roots must first be kept in ammonia - an aqueous solution of ammonia. Blue dye can also be obtained from larkspur flowers and bird buckwheat roots.

The green dye is extracted from the leaves of the shamrock (also, by the way, a medicinal herb). You can get a less bright, but still beautiful gray-green dye from the leaves and stems of mantle; Before preparing the decoction, they must be thoroughly crushed.

Yellow dye is produced by many plants: gorse, hazel (bark), alder buckthorn (bark, leaves, berries), bedstraw (flowers). Barberry fruit produces a yellow dye with a lemon tint.

If you boil dry onion skins in water, you get a brown dye of different shades - from almost yellow to dark brown. Another source of such dye is dry joster bark.

Blueberries and blackberries, as you might guess, contain a purple dye. It is not very durable, but can be quite useful for watercolor paints. And from the stems and leaves of celandine it is possible to extract an orange dye.

How to get black pigment? Firstly, for this you can prepare a decoction of berries and roots of the crow. But there is another way, a simpler one: add iron sulfate to one of the previously obtained decoctions. Almost all of our decoctions contain tannins such as tannin (remember the experiments with tea), and in the presence of ferrous iron salts they turn black.

Have you stocked up on enough thick, colorful infusions? Then let's get down to the main thing - making watercolor paint. Its main components are dye and water, but there are other essential components. First of all, substances that bind paint to paper, such as gum arabic or wood glues - substances with increased stickiness. Next, you need viscous substances, they will prevent the paint from spreading over the paper, making it lie in an even layer; Honey, molasses, and glycerin are good for this. And the last addition is an antiseptic and disinfectant. After all, we are dealing with substances of plant origin, and they must be protected from the action of microorganisms (molds that will certainly want to feed on our paints).

If you don’t have gum arabic, then it’s best to use cherry or plum glue as an adhesive, scum on the trunks, which can be collected directly from the trees - it won’t harm them. True, such glue (more precisely, gum) dissolves in water with difficulty, but if you add a little acid, the dissolution will go much faster.

For paint of each color, prepare 5-7 ml of adhesive solution of approximately 50% concentration. Mix it with an equal amount of glycerin or about three times less honey. Phenol will serve as an antiseptic; its 5% solution called “carbolic acid” is available in pharmacies. You need very little of this substance, literally a few drops.

Mix all the components of the future paint. The paint base is ready, only the most important thing is missing - the dye. Add it last in the form of a thick decoction, taking about the same amount as you got the base for the paint.

That, in fact, is the whole procedure. You may be wondering why the paint is not solid - in stores they sell it in tiles. However, artists also use semi-liquid watercolor paints in tubes. In consistency, they are exactly reminiscent of those multi-colored paints that you just prepared.

If you are going to store your paints, be sure to pour them into some bottles that are tightly closed with plastic stoppers, otherwise the paints will soon dry out. And you need to work with them the same way as with any other watercolor paints: a soft brush, thick paper... However, among the young chemists there are probably also young artists.

Before moving on to a new topic, here's one more tip: try dyeing your fabric. Indeed, in the old days, most plant dyes were used precisely for this purpose. Let’s just agree on this: don’t put good things in the dye bath (which can be a bowl or basin). Experiment with pieces of clean white fabric or yarn first. And only if you are convinced that the experiment is successful, take something - always from the same fibers on which you conducted the experiment.

Before dyeing, the fabric usually needs to be etched - kept in a hot solution of some salt; For this purpose, a solution of potassium alum is often taken. After holding the fabric or yarn in the mordant for several minutes, dip it in a decoction of the dye, previously filtered through cheesecloth, and boil in it. Unfortunately, it is impossible to give exact advice on how strong the decoction should be, because two outwardly identical plants may contain different amounts of coloring matter. So the concentration and processing time will have to be selected experimentally.

Let's name a few plants from which you can get good dyeing decoctions for fabric. Let's start with the already mentioned onion skins. In its decoction, the fabric will turn yellow-red if etched with alum, and green if etched with iron sulfate. Onion peels have been used since ancient times for dyeing wool and flax.

You can also make dye from potato leaves and stems. Their decoction will color the fabric lemon-colored if the fabric has been previously treated with a solution of any tin salt. A decoction of rhubarb root will give fabric etched with a solution of iron sulfate a marsh color.

Decoctions from tree bark can also be used to dye wool. Thus, alder bark will color wool dark red, ash bark - blue. Wild pear wood contains a brown dye (the wool must be pickled in an aqueous solution of some bismuth salt before dyeing). Birch leaves contain a gray-green dye, although it is not very effective.

In the old days, they rarely, but still dyed wool with a solution of coffee, only raw, to get a green color. Try this dye too, since you only need a small amount of raw coffee beans. They must be ground and boiled with the addition of washing soda, and the wool must be pickled in a hot alum solution before immersing it in the broth.

If you like this activity, check for yourself the coloring effect of other plants in combination with different mordants. It is possible that you will discover some unknown or completely forgotten combination, and the coloring will turn out to be extremely beautiful.

O. Holguin. "Experiments without explosions"
M., "Chemistry", 1986

annotation

The history of colors probably began with the advent of man. Primitive drawings made with charcoal and sanguine (clay) have survived to this day. Cave dwellers painted 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.

I have been painting at the art studio for 3 years with different paints: watercolors, gouache, oil paints, pastels. These paints can be purchased at any office supply store. And modern artists do just that. But a long time ago, when there were no shops and paints were not made in factories, where did artists get paints? Currently, paints are made from chemical elements. Is it possible to make environmentally friendly paints?

Purpose of the study:

Find out what substances paints are made of, determine the advantages and disadvantages of “homemade” paints.

Research objectives:

1. Familiarize yourself with popular science, educational literature and periodicals on the topic of research;
2. Study what substances paints are made of.
3. Conduct an experiment: make paints yourself at home.
4. Compare paints made at home and bought in a store.
5. Draw a picture from the resulting paints.

Hypothesis: I assume that you can make your own paints at home, but they will be different from store-bought ones.

THEORETICAL PART

Composition of paints

Paint is a material used to impart color.
Paints consist of a pigment and a binder.
Pigment is a dry dye.

The world around us is colorful.

Ancient artists looked for material for paints right under their feet. From red and yellow clay, finely grinding it, you can get red and yellow dye, or, as artists say, pigment. Black pigment produces coal, white pigment produces chalk, azure blue or green pigment produces malachite and lapis lazuli. Metal oxides also produce green pigment.

The first blue paint made from lapis lazuli sold 1 kg for 600 francs. Paints made from natural pigments were not only of various shades, but also of amazing durability. The Pskov icon of Dmitry Solu has survived to this day. This icon is over 600 years old and is still in good condition. The Pskov master made these paints himself. Still known: Pskov greens, red cinnabar and yellow Pskov.

Currently, almost all paints are made in laboratories and factories from chemical elements. Therefore, some paints are even poisonous, for example, red cinnabar made from mercury. Purple dyes can be made from peach pits or grape skins.

Dry dye cannot stick to the canvas, so you need a binder that glues and binds the particles of dry dye into a single colored paint mass. The artists took what was at hand: oil, honey, egg, glue, wax. The closer the pigment particles are to each other, the thicker the paint. The thickness of the paint can be determined by looking at how a drop of honey or an egg spreads, or at a long-drying drop of oil, which does not even combine with water, and when drying leaves a greasy mark.

Different binders produce different paints with different names.

Glue is included in watercolors and gouache. Watercolor is a light, translucent paint that requires dilution with water. The name itself speaks about this.
Oil is part of oil paints; they are the most durable and apply thick strokes to the paper. They are stored in tubes and diluted with solvent, kerosene or turpentine.
One of the ancient painting techniques is tempera. These are paints mixed with eggs, sometimes called “egg paints”. More than two thousand years ago, tempera was obtained by mixing pigment with egg yolk, and eight hundred to five hundred years ago with egg white, to which fig juice, honey or other substances unknown to us were simultaneously added.
There was another paint, very resistant, but the recipe for its preparation is lost. This is encaustic - paint mixed with wax. Figure 1 shows the Fayum portrait. This painting is about two thousand years old, it was found in a grave, we see an expressive and bright look.
Currently, it was not possible to prepare wax-based paint.
So, I found out that paints consist of a pigment and a binder.

The process of preparing paints.

After analyzing the literature and articles on the Internet, you can describe how paints are prepared. First they look for raw materials. It can be coal, chalk, clay, lapis lazuli, malachite. Raw materials must be cleaned of foreign impurities. The materials must then be ground to powder.
Coal, chalk and clay can be crushed at home, but malachite and lapis lazuli are very hard stones and require special tools to grind them. Ancient artists ground the powder in a mortar and pestle. The resulting powder is the pigment.
Then the pigment must be mixed with a binder. The following can be used as a binder: egg, oil, water, wax, glue, honey. The paint must be mixed well so that there are no lumps. The resulting paint can be used for painting.
Having found out the composition of paints and learned about the process of preparing paints, I realized that I could make some paints myself.

PRACTICAL PART

Description of experiments

To carry out the experiments, I needed to obtain natural pigments and binders. I had clay, chalk and coal at my disposal. I designed three experiments.

Experimental design 1
1. Clean the coal from foreign impurities.
2. Grind the coal into powder.
3. Sift the powder.
4. Mix charcoal with water.

Experimental design 2
1. Clean the clay from foreign impurities.
2. Grind the clay into powder.
3. Sift the powder.
4. Mix clay with oil.

Experimental Design 3
1. Clean the chalk from foreign impurities.
2. Grind the chalk into powder.
3. Sift the powder.
4. Mix chalk with egg.

All experiments were successful, and I received black, brown and white paints. I drew a picture with brown paint.

After conducting these experiments, I wanted to try other raw materials, so I conducted several more experiments. I mixed each type of raw material with water, oil and egg, resulting in paints that were different in color and consistency.

Experimental results

Now I know what paints are made of. You can prepare some paints at home.

The resulting paints differed in consistency and quality:
Charcoal with water gave the paint a metallic tint, was easy to apply to the brush and left a bright mark on the paper, and dried quickly
Clay with oil gave a dirty brown paint, did not mix well with oil, was difficult to apply to a brush, left a greasy mark on the paper and took a long time to dry
Chalk with egg produced white paint that was easy to apply to a brush, left a thick mark on the paper, took a long time to dry, but turned out to be the most durable

The results of other experiments can be seen in the table.
The resulting paints have advantages and disadvantages: environmentally friendly, free, have natural colors, but are labor intensive, do not have bright colors and are inconvenient to store.
In addition, I painted a picture using my own paints.
So, to prepare paint, you need to mix a pigment (chalk, charcoal, clay, malachite, lapis lazuli) with a binder (oil, egg, water).

conclusions

* The history of colors began with the advent of man.
* Painting paints consist of a pigment and a binder.
* Initially, earth, clay, coal, chalk, malachite, and lapis lazuli were used as pigments.
* Eggs, oil, water, and wax were used as a binder.
* Nowadays paints are made in laboratories and factories from chemical elements.
* During the experiments, I managed to get paints of different colors and shades and draw a picture.

Supervisor: Tarasova Natalia Gennadievna

Municipal educational institution “Elementary secondary school No. 5”
Russia, Nefteyugansk

I’ll try to write a post, I’m afraid (what’s “afraid”, I’m sure!) that it won’t all fit into one, like “How it’s made” or “How it works”, similar to How It’s Made on the Discovery Channel. I want to talk about how color is made, and to be precise, what makes paint colored.

Not about the entire spectrum, of course, but its main colors are red and yellow with all sorts of shades.

Disclaimer. I've been planning this post for quite some time now and the photos were taken just over a year ago. It took me some time to write the text itself and design it, then business and worries distracted me, and only now I’m ready to post it online.
Some photos may leave much to be desired, but I wasn’t there on an excursion, I work there, and thanks to the supervisor who allowed me to take it all. Although the workers looked very suspiciously at what I was doing, so I was not able to photograph their inspired faces. :)

In fact, the concept of “color” is something ephemeral, something that our eye sees and characterizes objects as well as their shape and size. But we cannot touch, taste or smell color. Therefore, the result of the manufacturing process that I want to talk about is a powder pigment that, when added to white paint or transparent plastic, will make them colored. Here, for example, are samples of products where our pigments are used

The blocks of watercolor paints that we know from childhood are actually the same compressed and packaged pigment, and it could be a product of our company if we supplied it to retail.

Our company also produces dye - a dye for clothes from blue to violet. This is the dye that, for example, makes work overalls dark blue or purple. And once upon a time we also made “blood”, that paint that is used in films and theatrical productions.

While preparing this post, I realized that I have a slight problem with terminology. In English this all sounds natural, but in Russian it doesn’t quite sound right. The word “pigment,” which most accurately characterizes what is produced at the last stage of production, jars my ears a little, and even more so the word “color,” familiar to many born in the USSR. Therefore, in addition to “pigment,” I will use the word “paint,” because it doesn’t matter what you got dirty with, ink, water-based or oil paint, or, conversely, you preened yourself using lipstick, nail polish, eye shadow and blush. After all, it is the colored paint that has left its mark on you.

To be honest, I don’t know how colored paint is made from different powders and liquids, this is pure magic chemistry. But the ingredients used are quite diverse: liquid and solid, in barrels and bags, toxic and deadly poisonous, from near and far abroad: caustic soda, hydrochloric and acetic acid 92% (let me remind you that the concentration of vinegar essence that our mothers and grandmothers used for pickling cucumbers, it was only 70%) and a lot more:

Rosin, which, as I understand it, gives the pigment brightness and shine

The starting ingredients are poured in a certain proportion into small reservoirs (tanks), ...

Where water has already been poured in and mixed.

If necessary, for a chemical reaction to take place, the mixture is heated with steam or cooled with ice. We make the ice ourselves in the so-called ice-house, which is on the roof, and it is poured onto the floor where they make paint, ...

And then, along a conveyor with augers (like in a meat grinder) and a system of dampers, the ice enters the desired tank.
The ice is flakes, not cocktail cubes, as one might think, and cannot be used in drinks, although sometimes you want to, especially in hot weather.

After this, the components enter the main tanks, which occupy two floors

For yellow paint, four tanks are used, for red - two, for clothing dye - one and another one for treating (correcting, processing) the water that remains from the production process, to an acceptable pH value, so that it can be returned to the city at the wastewater treatment plant .

This is a top view of one of the tanks

And this is from below

The diameter of the tanks is 3 m, height 4.5 m. Let's look inside one of them

Operators control the entire process using a touch-screen (I checked the dictionary to find out that in Russian this is called a “touch screen”).

Ready liquid pigment...

Pumps...

Pumped into presses, for each paint color its own

The main purpose of the press is to separate flies from cutlets, filter the pigment itself and make something more or less solid from the liquid, the so-called press-cake.

The press itself consists of hollow plates with holes for pumping paint between them.

Special filters are placed on each plate...

Which allow you to filter pigment diluted in liquid.

As you can see in the photographs above, the presses are closed, i.e. the entire set of plates is compressed together under pressure. When the paint is pumped into the press, it is located in the cavities between the plates and, in order to “squeeze” it out, water is pumped into each plate with a separate pump, inflating the plates so that the liquid leaves through the filters, leaving pigment cake between the plates, i.e. press-cake.

Then the press opens and it’s time to work with the handles, when the plates are moved apart using a special device and the operator uses a long plastic spatula to clean the filters from the resulting “pancakes” of pigment

"Pancakes" fall onto the conveyor...,

And from there to the gas dryer

Before entering the dryer itself, the still wet pigment is fed into a hopper, at the bottom of which a perforated grid is installed, ...

And it is pressed through the holes with rubber rollers...

And further along the conveyor into drying. I must say that I was lucky that at the time of photographing the bunker was empty and washed and you can see it all. It's funny to say, but this dryer was once used for making pasta.

And this is a bunker in the process of work and the paint in it is a different shade

One of the gas burners

The burner flame is adjusted in accordance with the required moisture content of the finished product, usually no more than 2%, and is checked automatically at the exit from the dryer.

These are paint granules after drying

When orders are received for paints of other shades, slightly different from the main ones, all equipment is washed: tanks - with almost boiling water of caustic soda solution, presses and dryers - simply with water from hoses under high pressure.

For small volumes of pigment, in order to avoid the rather lengthy and costly procedure of washing the main equipment, small dryers are used where the raw pigment is dried with hot steam, like in a sauna.

To do this, wet pigment, released from the press, with an ordinary shovel, (yes, the 21st century and all with pens) ...

Placed on baking sheets, which are transported in packs inside dryers.

To be continued

Taken from
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