You would think by now I would have one moment of hesitation before I started boiling 3 bunches of radishes that had been in the back of the fridge too long. It makes #WeirdSmells but will it make ink?
Surprisingly solid pink ink once it gets concentrated enough! Seems more stable than things like raspberry or red cabbage.
Can’t decide whether to add gum arabic for a drawing/dipping ink, or filter it better and add a bit of glycerin to try with a cheap fountain pen 🤔
Today’s little pleasure was this ink documentary and a heating pad. Recommended if you like artists at work, foraging, history of pigments and dyes, diy, or ink in particular. It features several inkmakers, cartoonists, calligraphers, artists, tattooists, and even a paleontologist.
Streaming free on CBC: The Colour of Ink
I yelped out loud when the film cut to Thomas Little in a pawn shop. He is a gentle soul who makes truly haunted iron-gall ink by dissolving guns in sulfuric acid. Very cool to see part of his process.
I make iron-gall ink too, using rusty bits of junk, vinegar, and the beautiful native oak trees in my neighbourhood. Amazing how different the vibes can be for similar recipes. I have some of Thomas’ gun ink and I haven’t been able to bring myself to open it, it just sits on my desk and whispers
Anyway I do think the documentary conveys the profound pleasure of making tiny batches of ink out of weird things you find out in the world
At one point Jason Logan from Toronto Ink Company makes black ink for a tattooist out of charcoal from a recent forest fire in the area. Part of what is so moving to me about this kind of poetic or haunted ink is the scale– you can make a bottle of ink out of a couple of grams of carbon dust, which leaves whole mountainsides of charcoal behind. Something about reasserting human scale is such a relief