Where is Paint From?

Paint can be made of animal, vegetable and mineral ingredients. It is basically a solid pigment in a liquid binding medium. Paint is usually applied with a brush, but you can use other tools too: a knife, a sponge or fingers. Paint can be dripped or poured on to a surface, flicked, splattered or even blown through a straw.

Some of the most ancient pigments came from the earth – for example, shades of brown, which were used in prehistoric cave paintings.

Some of the most precious traditional pigments were made by grinding minerals, such as a bright green from the stone malachite. One of the most expensive pigments – ultramarine blue – was made by grinding the semi-precious stone, lapis lazuli (from Afghanistan), which was more expensive than gold. Bone black was produced by charring animal bones, lamp black from burning oil and charcoal black by burning wood.

Some pigments come from metals. Verdigris (a bluish green) was made by hanging copper strips over fermenting grape skins, which creates a bluish green layer on the metal. Gold can be powdered and used as a pigment in paint.

There are many plants from which pigments can be made. For example, a blue comes from indigo and a yellow from saffron.

Many pigments are poisonous, for example, white which is made from lead. During the last two or three hundred years, many of the colours made from these natural substances have been produced from chemicals which is often cheaper, safer and easier to use. The earliest synthetic pigment was Prussian blue, which imitated the expensive ultramarine.