I still want to show you my adventures with the apple bark.

I told you about making the pigments.
Now I tried to turn them into some watercolour paint.

The recipe itself is easy:

You take one part (e.g. one teaspoon) of gum arabic and two parts of destiled water (or water that had been boiling at some point in the past and is at room temperature now) and mix them together until it becomes a smooth, runny paste (not unlike batter for pancakes).
Then you take about one part of the pigment and stir it into the batter. You keep on stirring until all of the lumps are gone and it’s an a smooth paste (this time it’s more like thick batter for spaetzle). Maybe you have to add some more pigments, but thats ok.

So far the theory.
The reality looks like this




It feels a bit like sandstone and it behaves like sandstone - meaning that it refuses to give away any colour.


Vegetale paint I’m not done with you yet!