this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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The Grind & Bind Art Alchemist's Guild

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Good day and welcome to The Grind and Bind Art Alchemist's Guild.

An artist's community for the kind of people who don't just paint, they scavenge pigment from rotten leftovers. It's for potters who dig their clay from riverbeds, for weavers who spin their own wool (and probably know the name of the sheep,) and it's for digital artists who hack away at their creative endeavors.

All flavors are welcome to:

How it goes:

Be kind

Do onto others with kindness, curiosity and civility.

Please include images

Remember to attribute other's work, tag NSFW and Content Warnings if necessary, and describe with alt text for our differently sighted pals.

No AI*

This isn't a community for AI *unless you've built it yourself and trained it on your own work.

Tags are Optional

[Advice Wanted] — "How do you...?" and "Help, something exploded."

[Article] — Selt explanatory. Please include a webarchive link if a site asks for personal details or has a paywall.

[Discussion] — In the huddle of stained alchemists, debates and compliments are equally encouraged.

[Challenge] — Try something new or show off your niche skills. (Mods only)

On Self-Promotion

We all need to put food in the ferret bowl, but let's not talk money here. If someone asks to buy something, please take it to DMs.

!artmarket@lemmy.world and !artshare@lemmy.world are geared toward self promotion if you want to cross-post.

This is a dark place.

Most art will leave you feeling inspired, maybe even joyful — if not a little thoughtful. Not this art.

This is a place of paint drinking gremlins with caustic burns on our hands and ink stains on our feet. A dark, damp basement smelling of bleach and burning and bioplastics, of empty wallets and ephemeral passions, of education, of science.

Most art makes people better, but this place can only make you worse, poorer, stained, and consumed by the craft.

Icon drawn by Wren

Banner image taken by Cottonbro on Pexels

This is a new community, the structure and rules may change without notice. All things are ephemeral. Shoot Wren a DM if you have any ideas or want to help out.

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Watercolour: https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2020/09/25/making-handmade-watercolours-with-jacksons-artist-pigments/

Tempera: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/how-to-make-egg-tempera-paint

Inks: https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2023/04/03/making-natural-ink-process-recipe-yellow/

My own recipe for alcohol inks:

  • Pack a bunch of a colourful thing into a jar of 99% isopropyl alcohol, like avocado pits and skins, spinach, red cabbage, lemon peel, etc. Cover tightly and let sit in a warm place for at least two days.

  • When enough colour has leached into the alcohol, filter out the solids, discard them or use for another batch, and either let the liquids sit open in a warm place or set in a double boiler. Iuse the same jar throughout the process, usually putting a bunch of them in the water bath together. Slowly let the alcohol evaporate until the desired consistency is reached. I keep a brush and paper nearby to test every 15-20 min. Colour should be rich and dense. Usually doesn't take me more than two hours of double-boiling to reach a good point.

  • Mix in gum agaric solution, about 1 part to 3 parts ink. Test again.

  • You can keep reducing the ink, but at this point it will turn gel-like or hard if you evaporate all the alcohol.

Acrylic is a hard one to track down since it's a modern paint and most every company has their own secret formulation. It's a mix of glues, monomers, binders and solvents, and I haven't had any success trying to make my own from ingredients. In most cases it's cheaper and easier to just buy acrylic medium (paint without the pigment) to mix your own.

If you want to go deeper, and I can't imagine not wanting to discover hidden secrets, here's a whole paper on it: https://www.rroij.com/open-access/chemical-formulations-for-acrylic-matt-and-acrylic-gloss-paints.pdf

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