Making paint and ink from wildfire-sourced charcoal
You can definitely say I’m obsessed with making paint and ink from wild-crafted pigment sources—and this week I went a bit to an extreme, collecting ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) charcoal from the 2020 Bighorn Fire burn area on the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson.
I'm co-producing a webinar on Tucson's Bighorn Fire for UArizona 's Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, where I'm art and science program coordinator, so I spent some time last week with scientists on the year-old, 119,000-acre burn. [Sign up for the free webinar, on June 2 at 6 pm AZ time: https://environment.arizona.edu/fire-on-the-mountain/]
I just processed the charcoal into paint / ink by grinding it in a small mortar and pestle, then added a little water to make it a medium-thick paint / ink consistency, then added a little bit of binder —about five drops (a mixture gum arabic, ox gall, and honey, but you could use just gum arabic).
Ink made from charcoal, or more commonly soot (the oily residue left on the walls of lamp chimneys, or your fireplace), is known as India Ink or Chinese Ink. Still in use today, it’s often sold in stick form, pressed into beautiful molds depicting scenes or animals; to use, you grind off some pigment and add water. Paint made from soot is called Lamp Black. More on India ink here.
To about 3 tsp. of charcoal powder, add distilled water to a milk-like consistency. Add about 5 drops of binder (see above) and mix well. Mix well.
Paint or write on paper and let dry. Rub a finger over to test for adherence (see test paper below). Add more binder if it smears, more pigment if it’s weak.
It's really special to draw / paint with materials gathered right from a site—truly place-based journaling.
The solution smells just like a forest fire, which is startling and bittersweet.
Journal page, with watercolor sketch done in Bighorn Fire Black, made with Ponderosa Pine charcoal from the 2020 Bighorn Fire in Tucson’s Santa Catalina Mountains.