Thrifty Art Thursday: Walnut Ink

You may know black walnuts as the trees that make those annoying green golf balls that explode under your car tires, but I’m telling you they are the makings of a lovely ink.

First go out and harvest some husks. You don’t need a lot to make ink.

Then put them in a pot and add some water to cover. It doesn’t need to be perfect, and often if they’re dried out, they won’t sink at all. Use a pot dedicated to stinky messes (I have a number of them, to the horror of my DH.)

Boil for a while, reducing the water by half. You should have a dark brown liquid that is a little thicker than water. Pour it off into a container. Add a tablespoon or two of Gum Arabic (you can get that at any art supply store in the watercolor section) and a tablespoon or two of honey. The Gum Arabic increases the viscosity and translucence of the ink and the honey acts as a thickener and preservative.

You can see a couple of sketches I did with my new ink:

This one is on an unsized sketch book, and you can see how the ink was soaked up by the paper.

And this one is on a cold press ATC the ink works much better on this sort of paper, but really that’s perfectly normal for ink. 🙂