Nov 1512 min read

Dying Season- make natural dye/ink

For ultimate safe art and plant nerding

There’s something I’ve been dying to tell you- puns. Well, also stuff about making your own colorants– aka dyes.

harvesting natural dyes, basket of summer harvest

blackberry stains on fingers, blackberry dye

Most people have noticed blackberries stain their fingers when they eat them, dripped blueberry sauce regrettably on a white shirt (why EVER where white?), or blobbed tomato sauce on that nice new top. Foods can stain. And we can USE that, for more than an excuse to ditch a scratchy dress shirt. People have been finding natural materials to make dyes for fabrics for thousands of years and different cultures had their favorite hard to make rich colors based on what’s in that region.

Dyes, paints, and ultimately "pigments" have a rich hue of culture behind them, and people have a strong connection to colors. Just ask folks what their favorite color is. Do it. Wait, what's yours??

prehistoric cave painting, ancient paints, prehistoric pigments

“Back in the day” artists made their own pigments and added them to carrier oils (aka a base) for unique oil paints. Or watercolors (sans oil). Way back- pigments were used for cave drawings by the legit OG artists, or shaman, or just that weird proto-hominid that the others avoided maybe? Often those were using minerals like azurite, sulfur and ochre, or metals like iron, copper, cobalt, or compounds of both mineral + metal.

This is where toxicity can come in! Many of those are quite toxic and most metals alone are not good, but who knew back then. 70,000 years ago, the life expectancy was lower anyway. You didn't have time to die of lead poisoning, or arsenic-copper toxicity.

But many plants and even animals can also leave a nice stain, plenty of which are also edible. Licking your paintbrush to keep a fine point would be much safer. Better than the radioactive paint used to paint watch faces to glow, by young ladies later dubbed the Radium Girls (link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls). I’m a fan of eating weeds to help control them and thus making organic (safe) inks from foraged items is just as fun and sustainable. Boil up invasive flowers to make yellow paint and prevent spreading the seeds? WIN WIN! Oh but maybe don't like that paint. Some invasive flowers are toxic. Plants, right!?

"She's pretty as a daisy! But look out man she's crazy!" ~Poison Ivy, Coasters.

gall ink painting, avalanche lily painting, painting with natural ink

I already played with oak gall ink and loved how it looked for painting. Sort of a watercolor

but feels different. Summertime was the time to go play and see what I could add to a big basket just within the neighborhood (feeling like a nerdy little Red Riding Hood) and see what sort of pigments I could get out. I already knew some berries that while totally edible aren’t so yummy due to texture or seeds, so they are better suited for sauce or syrups, but that could also be a paint. And such fruits are the edible very safe form of a paint. Note- some colorful flowers etc are not non-toxic so don’t think just because you can make your own from found plants that you can lick any paintbrush dipped in your homemade paint.

Always be careful what you LICK.

But there’s another caveat. Most purple to red colors in plants are from a well-known unstable pigment called anthocyanin. The green of chlorophylls (the photosynthetic pigment of plants) and maybe less so the oranges of carotenoids are also unstable, and all these pigments will/can degrade to a more brownish lighter color under heat or sunlight, or by chemicals, enzymes, etc. But there can also be ways to stabilize pigments. Using SCIENCE!

There’s a full rainbow of colors out there that we can tap into for some home-made dyes. And you don’t need to be a science nerd to make them. They won’t explode! Ok, there is a flower that breathes out flammable gas, but still. Literally go find colorful stuff, boil it for a while in water and see what comes out. Even bark can lend interesting unexpected results. The colors may not stay, or be as rich as they could be, or what you expected, but you can build on what you learn from that and keep optimizing. And then you will indeed become a scientist.

Here’s some guidance:

Rule of thumb for dying fabric- use double the weight of your fabric for whatever plant material you try (2 parts berries/leaves/whatever : 1 part fabric). Then cook the plant material in a stain-resistant non-reactive pot (like aluminum) with enough water to eventually soak the fabric in. Heat to simmer for 10-30min (or however long ya feel like) and maybe mash or blend up the plant stuff so it’s all able to be leached of color. The heat level used to extract in the water can change the color depending on what you are using, especially delicate/unstable pigments. So you may want to start gentle.

Once you have the colorful mash soup, strain out the particulate with a sieve or filter to leave just the dye water. You don’t want chunky spots on your fabric, unless a blobby tie-dye look is desired. Add your fabric to the slightly cooled strained inky water and soak for a while (minutes to hours) depending on level of color you want. Stir and peek on occasion to see if it’s how you’d like yet. Some will likely wash out when you rinse, fyi.

I don’t really have anything I want dyed, but I did painting with my new oak gall ink. So for my desired artistic purposes, I’ll use less water and even cook off some of it after straining to make a thicker more concentrated ink/paint versus a soak for fabrics.

Fabric Dying (no Dyeing) Summary-

1) Double the plant stuff to fabric

2) Cook in water (cooking down more for a paint/ink) for 10-30min

3) Strain then soak fabric testing after a while for color uptake.

*4) Then test for color retention and, if desired, play with changing the pigment water with additions to alter or stabilize the hue.

harvesting natural dyes, tansy ragwort uses — I found enough tansy ragwort (highly invasive) to make some dye from their yellow flowers, pulling up the whole plants as I collected- win win.

For my dyeing adventure, I tried several local berries, pea flowers, invasive tansy ragweed, and wild cherries, plus black walnut hulls later in summer (using the soft very black outer peridocarp part that tends to turn gooey when left out).

Let's get stable:

Materials that give a stable and strong desired color without requiring the addition of other compounds are called direct dyes, aka substantive dyes. And those tend to be famous ones, that aren't necessarily found in your neighborhood. "Mordants" (like iron water) can be added to help the pigments durably attach to fibers (paper or fabric). Metals are common among mordants. Because so many pigments can degrade and turn a meh-brown... let's see how we can stabilize their color against the elements.

Fun fact- urine has also been used as a mordant and for extracting pigment. I did not test this. next time though...

To test how stabilizing additives helped maintain the colors through time and light exposure, I used both the additions of sugar and acid singularly to most of my ink extracts. Then I hung my test pages up in the summer sun for about two weeks to test each version of the ink for stability. I also used iron water to see how it enhanced or deepened the different colors with some very nice results. I say iron water is a must-have for all ink/dye making.

There are also methods in dyeing or ink making that help stabilize a colorant using a “pretreatment”, which is just a step or ingredient added at the start or a way to first treat the color/plant material to extract so it stays that color. Sometimes that’s an enzyme or a chemical (like acid) or even ultrasonic treatment. But let’s keep it SIMPLE.

In my plant dye nerding research, I found several articles showing altering pH to be more acidic can stabilize many pigments, and with some research on greens, I found sugars can also help- to stabilize chlorophylls. So that's why I tested those two. I already had experience with how lemon juice (acid) will change anthocyanin (from purple carrots) from deep plum purple to a bright fuchsia, when I was playing with the juice from shredded purple carrots for a purple carrot cake. Delish and educational! This reaction is also done in some cocktails, so have fun with that!

I found this table so nicely made from the paper by Luxsika Ngamwonglumlert, Sakamon Devahastin & Naphaporn Chiewchan (2017). Please enjoy!

Stabilizing Results?- interesting.

For my test of that dark purple anthocyanin color- Oregon grape, Himalayan blackberry, and salal fruits still didn't hold up much purple or red after weeks in the sun, even with stabilizers added after color extraction. Note- Test before/during next. But I'm not likely to leave my paintings in the sun for weeks, so I don't care that much.

natural paint, natural inks, berry ink, berry dye — all the berries with anthocyanins (iron water - acid - sugar, and plain underneath)

Iron water addition made all a nice deeper tone and especially enriched the salal fruit's color. Adding a little sugar did help retain some depth of color in all purple extracts/ink, and slighly lesser so did the adidtion of lemon juice, when compared to the un-altered plain solutions. At first painting, I really liked the OG Oregon grape (ha, OG OG) color but sadly it fades more. Fleeting beauty, always, right?

I suspect adding iron plus sugar will probably be a great combo for purples! Increasing the amount of sugar also seemed to help.

I didn't bother with sugar versions of the pink sweet pea flowers or yellow tansy flower (which prevents them from going to seed and helpful since tansy ragwort is highly invasive and a quarantine species not allowed to spread from your property if you have it). Or with red wild cherry fruits I found, or some spirulina (algae) I have that I do not like the taste of but has a gorgeous dark blueish-green. Not testing that last green/chlorophyll extract with sugar which I specifically found could help stabilize chlorophylls was just getting tired and lazy after long time cooking and cleaning a few pots over and over, etc.

natural dyes from berrires — cooking 3 berries at once

natural dyes testing — comparing iron, acid, and sugar for each berry

So maybe sugar would have helped better! Acid did help stabilize all of these more than the plain extract, and again iron water for the rich color win! Sweet pea plain extra was nearly invisible and the others actually darkened in some sun (sweet!). Plain tansy flower extract was very light yellow too.

natural inks — red cherry and green spirulina on bottom, very faint ink but cherry with iron darken over time

WHAT NEXT!!!!

For more color guidance with info from the pros:

Purples & Reds-

Try any sort of fruit or flower with that color, or leaf or root (like purple carrots).

Both shades come from the anthocyanin pigment group with a lot of shades based on amount & which ones, other chemicals, etc. They are considered more of a stain than a dye because of this, fading to a basic brown. They are denatured by the pH of their solvents (what you extract with) and heat. Ever cooked red onion on hight heat? Purple cabbage? Funny story- making yummy eggy frittata with purple cabbage will cook to create a weirdly unappetizingly pretty BLUE shade.

Blue eggs & ham, also not looking so good.

The color of our foods has a lot of impact on our interpretation of it. If you want a fascinating tale, look up why a long period of the 19th century was associating green baked goods with poison (link here, hint- copper + arsenic).

Chemistry time!! Anthocyanins are water-soluble (duh) pigments of phenolic structure and are impacted by co-pigments, sulfites, oxygen (don’t know how I’d control that as I left my handy vacuum chamber in the lab), and enzymes (plus pH, light, & heat already mentioned).

To dye fabric with purples & reds, try presoaking the fabric in lemon juice, or adding citric acid to the dye water either before cooking or after. Acid tends to lighten the dark purples to a bright red/fuchsia. You can also test adding baking soda (a base instead of an acid) to soak your fabric or the dye water and see what that does. I know... I need so many more bowls! You can also test a water solution to RINSE your fabric.

Yellow-

Yellows (and oranges) come from carotenoids, which are long-chain, water-repelling (hydrophobic) pigments, or from other compounds like luteolin (a flavinoid from Reseda luteola, aka famous woold/weld plant, dyer's rocket, etc) which is also in apple skins and broccoli and investigated for medicinal properties. Luteolin is a fairly stable dye. Quercitin is another yellow flavinoid from oaks and onion skins. Cucurmin is another deep yellow (from famously yellow turmeric- I stained a spoon making chili once...) and is also pretty stable.

tansy ragwort vs goldenrod — Jacobaea vulgaris (tansy ragwort) compared to native golden rod (which I left to spread its gooood seeds)

tansy ragwort control, tansy flower dye — put any forming seed heads of tansy in the trash! (do not compost or leave outside, they can make new plants)

Many yellows you stumble upon at random may not yield a very rich color, so pros recommend the following:

Chameleon plant, Houttuynia cordata, creates a golden dye from the whole plant boiled in water.
Mahonia shrub roots (Oregon grapes) have a deep yellow inner wood and can be boiled for a yellow dye. Wow, purple from the fruits or a nice berry simple syrup for drinks, or yellow dye from the roots? And deer resistant leaves but delicious young green leaves? I love these plants!!
Mullen leaves and roots also create a yellow dye. Kill and boil this highly invasive weed (here in the PNW) and get something useful out of it. Win win.
Old man’s beard lichen (Usnea), aka Spanish moss is also a yellow to orange dye.
St John’s wort, found ALL over the US and beyond as a medicinal plant brought over from Europe and escaped into… everywhere…, is also long used for a golden yellow dye from the flowers.
Eucalyptus leaves will give a orangey-bronze tone dye

tansy extract, tansy ink, natural yellow ink — comparing tansy extract- with iron and acid (to plain on left)

Greens-

Is green the easiest to find? I mean, MOST plants have a fair amount of chlorophyll; it's what they do. One of the best sources of chlorophyll is a Dracaena, but pretty much any plant will have green, even if their leaves are red in the growing season. Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) has been found to help stabilize the green of chlorophyll after pigment extraction, as well as Magnesium carbonate (MgCO3) if you happen to have that laying around (maybe in toothpaste). So a little chalk or powdered eggshells or limestone could be worth a try for the CaCO3 when making green dyes. The carbonates neutralize the acidity of plant tissue that is a source of color degradation. Other stabilizing treatments/pretreatments may include stopping certain enzymes that are known to break down chlorophylls.

Ever blanched a green veggie (broccoli, peas, green beans) before putting them in the freezer or dehydrator? That especially preserves their bright green compared to just sticking them in the freezer or dehydrator. Quick heat treatments can also stabilize chlorophyl.

Pink?-

While some pinks could come from a diluted anthocyanin solution which can be red-fuchsia, there are some pinky compounds all their own, like alizarin which makes a more red color. Alizarin is a hydroxyl anthraquinone compound, only slightly soluble in water (acidic water helps), famously comes from the madder plant's roots, with the dye often called Madder Red. The nice thing is that this compound is more stable than anthocyanins.

Avocado seeds/pits can also lend a slightly pinkish but also kind of beige dye, like a soft pleasant brass color. Just their thin skins make a more yellow tone, so maybe removing the skins first can give more pink.

Some succulent plants also produce a pink/red water-soluable amino acids called betalains. Betacyanins are the specific betalain group, from plants like beets and the rainbow chards that provide violets, red and pink dyes. Related betaxanthin betalains make yellow & orange dye.

pink sweet pea flowers, lose color fast in cooking

Don't forget the cranberries! You could literally make your cranberry sauce for dinner, squeezing out the juice from the edible pulp, for dyeing your own dinner napkins! Impress the inlaws with THAT! It lends a soft maroon-pink that looks delish.

Blue-

Blue is harder, as the rarer color in nature. But it's around. Indigo is the very famous blue dye made from a robust herbacious plants called indigo (or Japanese indigo, French indigo, natal indigo, etc) of the Indigofera genus. Early indigo dye (dating to maybe 4000 BCE) may have started in India but the genus is native to tropical areas of Africa, Asia and the Americas. Woad (from Isatis tinctoria) is another famous blue dye plant, from Europe, used for thousands of years as well. It's related to spinach and other mustard family plants, blue mustard (unlike the yellow that does come from some wild mustard plants).

anthocyanin changes with acid — purple carrot juice turning from purple to pink with lemon juice

Red cabbage (like so many misnomers) yields a smokey blue dye that stays well without any mordant, but best with slightly acidic solution. Dogwood tree (Cornus) bark boiled will make a nice blue, and the fruit (which are interestingly red) make a greenish blue dye as well. Blue flowers like many irises, cornflowers, and spring hyacinth bulb flowers can also make blue dyes.

Ironically, black beans yield a light blue dye. I mean...... are you delighted yet?!?

Black & Browns-

Black or very dark brown dyes can come from types of tannins, anthocyanins or melanin. Tannin compounds include the dark browns of walnut hulls and oak galls. Dark dark purples from loads of anthocyanin will look black, while the brownish hue of melanin is literally where humans get our skin pigmentation from, along with pretty much all life on Earth (plants, animals, even bacteria and fungi have melanin in their bodies). Both of these can act as an adaptive sort of sunscreen for animals and for plants (which use anthocyanin for that too).

Iris roots, oak galls and walnut hulls, can all be boiled down very concentrated into a nearly black dye. Or lighter as a variety of rich browns. Iron water will be important to deepen the colors for a darker ‘black’ look. I’ve tested both oak galls and black walnut hulls which were quite obvious to give a dark dye. If you’ve never hung out under a walnut tree, the big dark brown fruits- like a black small lumpy apple as the recognizable wrinkly nut is in the middle- fall to the ground and get all gooey slimy, sometimes nibbled by animals to reveal the wrinkly nut inside. Keep the nut for eating (well crack it open first to get the edible walnut) and boil down that slimy husk.

Iron and copper added mordants can create darker tones for more of a black than rich brown.

White?-

Don't be silly...

For more great lists/tables on natural dyes from native plants in North America: Click HERE

References:

Dying Season- make natural dye/ink

Recent Posts

Comments