When I describe my creative process, it seems easiest to compare it to things you’d see in nature. Most often, my creativity comes in waves. I’ll work on a project over the course of a few weeks: I’ll work on it for a few days, then take a few days off to work on something else. Unfortunately, though, it’s not always such a serene practice. Sometimes, I feel like I'm swirling in a tornado of ideas, not really able to latch onto anything in particular and getting wrapped up in feelings of frustration. Other times, it’s like a crack of lightning, where I get hit with some serious inspiration and focus for one specific thing, and I can finish whole poems or paintings all in one go. More recently, though, I’ve experienced a burst of creativity which can be only compared to a wildfire.
At first, it was awesome! I was working on multiple paintings, poems, videos, and articles all at once. Like many people adjusting to a work from home lifestyle, I felt able to cram more and more of my free time with ways to be creative, ways to channel my anxiety, and ways to produce things that would help others cope with the world as we move through the world. There was a feeling of accomplishment as I was able to finish projects and stay passionate about my work as I jumped onto another. I also felt encouraged by the other artists around the globe taking advantage of the extra time and energy they had to focus on building their portfolios. The thing about wildfires is that they can’t regulate themselves very well. As they continue to burn, eventually they will eat through all of their available kindling. Once that happens, they will be unable to go any further. They burn themselves out. Recently, I started feeling myself struggle to do anything creative, even though I still had the drive to make new things as I had been doing for the last couple months. At first I didn’t understand why it was it was hard for me to create anything when a week or two prior, I felt like I was on a creative streak. Looking back, however, it started making sense: I had just finished writing a series of new poems, finished two paintings, had multiple offers for projects outside of work, and on top of that, I was still working full time (even if my office is just a few yards away from where I sleep). And, like I always point out when talking about stress in 2020, the world around us isn’t exactly a comfortable, stress-free place to be at the moment. At the same time I was starting to feel the beginnings of my own burnout, I noticed articles from all over the web describing how so many creatives are going through the exact same thing. Just as a wildfire tends to eat up everything in sight, I was allowing my plate to get immensely full without thinking if I had room for everything to fit. There is only so long you can work at full capacity like that. The good thing about metaphors, in this case, is also the recognition that they can only explain so much of what they are being compared to. Unlike wildfires, we have the ability to recognize when we are approaching a creative burnout. And luckily, we can also find ways to slow down, take stock of how we’re feeling, and create strategies to help us navigate through, and hopefully avoid, total burnout. A little while ago, my colleague Mike Campbell and I created a workshop titled “5 Fun Ways to Beat Quarantine Creative Block,” which had some fun activities designed to take your mind off your block and try to inspire some new ideas. But it doesn’t always take being creative to avoid or heal from creative burnout. Sometimes it takes a good night’s rest, watching your favorite TV show, or going camping (currently working on doing all three). And while I feel comfort by getting back to a place where I can be creative as soon as I can, there isn’t a requirement to get back to being creative within a couple days, weeks, or even months, in some cases. So, if you are starting to feel frayed at the ends, or like the candle you’ve been burning at both ends is running out of wax, take a step back for a moment. Keep your expectations reasonable, take breaks as needed (extended ones if possible), and make sure you are staying connected to what your body needs from you in order to heal and move forward. Creativity will be there when you get back. - Jasmine Green, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find Jasmine's work here or follow her on Instagram.
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Did you read the title and get a bit of anxiety at the thought of not using an eraser to sketch? If you did, I completely understand. To be honest, I actually share some of your anxiety about it. Out of the kinds of art I do on a regular basis, sketching is absolutely my least favorite. This wasn’t always the case, though; as a kid, I drew whenever and wherever I could. I would draw everything from model cars to snakes, basically anything that caught my interest. I’ve even had a drawing or two crumpled up by an annoyed teacher (still kind of upset about that). All my love for sketching changed once I discovered acrylic paint in high school. With the ability to build and layer the medium like I’ve never been able to with graphite, I put all my practice into acrylic and abandoned the years of work I put into learning how to sketch. Once I regained an interest in sketching the last couple of years (for the simple reason that, for me, better sketches = better paintings), I developed a rather anxiety-provoking knack for constant erasing of any perceived mistakes, even at times starting over on a sketch that was near complete because it wasn’t “just right”. This conflict with sketching created a lack of interest in working to re-develop my drawing skills. And I knew that, in order to keep progressing in my craft, I had to confront this stubborn roadblock. So, recently I’ve been putting myself up to a challenge. For the last month or so, I have been sketching things in pen, not allowing myself to redraw or erase anything I thought didn’t look “perfect”, and attempting to finish the sketch even if it didn’t turn out the way I wanted. It’s been an especially random process, as I typically only remember to do it when my schedule is clear for a while. But every time I have attempted it, it has been fully worthwhile. Here are some reasons why you should give it a shot: 1. It builds character! I know, I sound like every grizzled dad talking to their teenager from a 90s TV show, but knowing you cannot erase any perceived mistakes is a really easy way to both build confidence in yourself as an artist and to identify areas of improvement you might want to work on. Multiple times when I decided to sketch something, I went into it thinking the end result would be a lot worse than it actually was. Even though it’s fully reasonable to be nervous trying something as difficult and seemingly “final” as sketching in pen, I came to realize that it was also a very low-stakes way of showing myself what I can do when I put my mind to it. Unlike a painting or a sculpture, for instance, the time dedicated to an individual sketch is incredibly miniscule. I often used our Creative Cafes, our daily 30-minute creativity chill sessions here at the C4C (which I definitely recommend you check out, btw!) as a soft timer for the amount of time I would dedicate to any individual sketch. And instead of trying to think up a concept purely from my imagination, as I often do in a painting, I used items in my work environment as models, which kept things pretty casual. And while I don’t suggest sharing your final results if you aren’t comfortable with that just yet (or at all!), I slowly started getting really excited about posting the sketches on social media once I was done, something that used to always bring me dread. Sometimes the best way to conquer a fear is to confront it head on. But wait, there’s more! (Yes, I had the infomercial voice in mind while writing that.) Not only does it help build your confidence to draw with full commitment, it also literally gives what you draw character! In a redraw of a painting I did in 2016, I noticed how the sketch had a different feeling than the painting I put together all those years ago. It felt more fluid than the original, as I took creative liberties that didn’t exist in the reference. In the end, I had two very similar and yet very different pieces of art. While working on the sketch, I momentarily thought about small details that were off in ways that I typically fix with a redraw later; repositioning the arm or making the hands bigger to be more proportionate. However, the more I observed what I drew, the more I started loving those little “happy little accidents,” in the words of just-go-with-the-art-flow king Bob Ross, as the piece feeling a bit off is a part of its appeal. 2. It gives you a reason to slow down and appreciate all the little details For as horrific the pandemic has been (and believe that I do not wish to make light of that fact in the slightest) the single silver lining I have been able to find is that it has been one of the few things that, briefly, brought the whole world to a standstill. It wasn’t for as long as it should’ve been, of course. However, it was still incredible to me, as somehow who was struggling to balance my home, work, social, and rest schedules with the pressure from social media to keep them out of balance, that we finally had a national and global discussion about slowing things down. And so in the weeks and months following initial lockdown, I’ve been looking for ways to slow down in any ways I am able, like fully appreciating meals and taking walks around my neighborhood without headphones (which also means fewer bus rides). And even though I did the best I could to consciously slow myself down in a myriad of different activities, it wasn’t until I started this challenge that I realized I have the tendency to rush through the sketching process. It made sense, as it wasn’t my forte and was perhaps one of the most uncomfortable parts of the artistic process for me. Still, for me to get better at it, I had to learn to take my time and really observe what I was doing. And drawing in pen helped me to start drawing with intention. I started noticing little aspects of things, like how there are multiple different types of glare on curved glass, or the multiple ridges on the leaves of a Rex Begonia plant. These are things I would’ve never cared to pay attention to while I was in a hurry to get to the painting process. 3. You’ll find that you judge yourself less when you are allowed to make “mistakes”
All people, no matter their level of expertise or level of connection to their creative side, know the feeling of being too hard on themselves. In all of our brains, we have a little critic who oversees all we do and isn’t afraid to point out even the most miniscule of human errors and make them out to be the most egregious missteps imaginable. The critic can sometimes be really helpful: sometimes a little self-doubt is all it takes to ask for help when you need it, or to spend more time on something you truly care about. It can be the reason that we think things through or reflect on our actions so we learn from them in the future. However, for all the good our internal critics can do, they can also wreak havoc on our ability to try something new or difficult. Too often, our fear of not being good or even promising at something on our first few tries will prompt the critic to sow seeds of self-doubt and to question why we would attempt something outside of our comfort zone in the first place. Our internal critic can also prevent us from even trying anything new at all, convincing us that it’s better to not “embarrass ourselves” and to stick to what we already know. Sketching for me is one of those things that send my critic's alarm bells ringing. Even though I knew my sketches would be private for as long as I wanted them to be, the fear of messing up was so palpable that I couldn’t make myself start this experiment until a week after I told myself I would embark on it. But gaining enough courage to push the self-doubt out of my mind and risk not getting something right out of the gate allowed me to start this hobby that I am really beginning to enjoy. Through this process, I realized I wasn’t giving myself enough credit by only latching onto what I did wrong. I let little errors here and there color my perception of a perfectly fine drawing as something inadequate on arrival. While I can’t say I didn’t grumble under my breath about errors, I felt a lot more confident about my sketching skills once I allowed myself to really see the sketch through to the end. Once I removed that little critic from my brain, I gave myself a chance to figure things out. And instead of constant criticism, I finally started the process of appreciation. Try this out and see what lessons it brings you. I hope you use it as an excuse to be imperfect for a while, and to experience all the joys it brings. If anything, we as creatives (and people as a whole) deserve a break from expecting perfection for a while. - Jasmine Green, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find Jasmine's work here or follow her on Instagram. Did you try this out? Send us a photo at [email protected] for a chance for it to be featured on our site! As many of us do now, I struggle with some anxiety in public. Because of this, I went from walking various neighborhoods, busy parks, and popular trails to roaming through my own neighborhood, where I could retreat indoors if anxiety got the best of me. At first this was great, because I was exploring parts of my environment I had never seen before. But Highland Park is only so big, and I needed to find a way to change up my walks. As an artist, I find the way we interact with urban settings fascinating, and I like to contemplate what makes people choose what they do in terms of design and aesthetics. This lends itself to changing up my regular walks, and I hope it inspires you to do the same: what I see and think about might be completely different for you! On trees If you are interested in plants like I am, you might take note of trees. They're everywhere in urban and suburban landscapes, sometimes shoehorned into spaces in ways that are very different from what you see in the woods. What do you notice about trees in your neighborhood? When you look at a tree, can you tell where human interventions have changed the growing pattern? Can you see places in the bark where bottom branches have been cut? Is the tree shaped? Can you tell if the trees are old? Are there parts of the tree that are dead, or yellow growths on new trees? Do you notice the patterns of bark growth? Is the tree out of place (like palm trees typically found around Pitt’s campus in the summer), and how does its location affect the tree's growth? Observations from my walk Walking around Highland Park, I began to really take note of trees around power lines. People have very precisely shaped these trees to keep them from interfering with the lines, but beyond that there seems to be no care for the trees' aesthetic, which makes for weird and whimsical creations. My favorite was one with a single branch directly under the power lines, which made it look like it was holding the line up. Trees in sidewalks also have some interesting root growth. It’s strange to see such large roots aboveground, as the tree tries to expand beyond the little space it was given between sidewalk and road. I also found one where the root split the sidewalk in half, and while it isn’t uncommon for roots to grow under the sidewalk, you don’t often see them clearly breaking through on smaller trees. There was one tree at an extreme tilt that looked like it was looming over the cars. One tall tree looked like it had had all of its branches chopped off, only to rebel and sprout new growth from the bottom, with one very prominent branch at the top. It was very striking and resembled a rebellious power line pole itself. We probably don’t think of this much, but so many power line poles are former trees. You can see the notches that use to be branches, and how it tapers toward the top. It’s also a reminder of when paper flyers were used a lot more often; if you look closely, you can often see a lot of staples. Something else I observed are the prevalence of Japanese Maples! I swear you can’t walk a block in Highland Park without seeing one in someone's yard. People use a wide variety of trees for landscaping, but because I didn’t grow up in an area where a lot of people planted ornamental trees, these red trees stand out a lot (just like Pitt's palm trees). I managed to find a dracaena, another variety of tropical tree, planted in someone’s yard; it presumably hasn’t survived over the winter and was planted just for the season. Try taking a walk through your neighborhood with a fresh, focused, and creative eye. What do you observe about the trees there...? - Mike Campbell, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find Mike's work on Instagram. I’m proudly Jamaican. My entire family is from Jamaica. The last time I got to visit was over Christmas break during junior year of high school; we had just finished building a new house on my family’s land. The typical routine is that as we drive from Kingston airport, we stop at the Juici Patty factory on the way to Saint Elizabeth. (I’ve never seen what it looks like, cause I’ve slept through it every time, and not one person decided it would be nice to wake Kami up so she can see what the factory looks like.) I usually wake up groggy 30 minutes later, but then I get a patty and a carton of sorrel (a drink made from hibiscus flowers) to eat during the ride. Then we get home, drive past the mango tree in the front yard that my mom’s parents are buried under, and see the house she grew up in slightly down the path (bright lavender, with a cross painted on the front door). In the morning, my mom makes me run down the road to grab a bag of flour so we can make fry dumpling for breakfast to eat with our ackee (the national fruit), and my aunt comes over with a whole bunch of mangoes and soursop from her tree. We head to the beach — my uncle drives us — and in the middle of the day, he surprises us with a big block of ice from the back of his truck, shaving some ice that we top with fruit punch syrup. My mom points out where she went to school and where she bought oranges right outside the school gate. I meet so much family I didn’t know existed, and get three times that number of mosquito bites. And then when we leave to come back to the states, we buy a box of frozen patties and stock up on white rum and red label wine at the airport duty free store. My mom didn’t grow up in the states at all. American history is not her strong point. But despite that, she raised my sister and I to be so aware of Black American history as well as our own culture. In third grade, she gave me The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I read Sojourner Truth’s Autobiography, and made her out of a potato for a class project. If there was a new Black History movie, best believe my family was in the movie theatre. Or buying it on DVD and BluRay. (We didn’t even have a BluRay player.) Every MLK Jr. Day, my mom would sit my sister and me down (under our dining room table: our house had a weird set-up), and we would watch his speech start to finish. Now I take my mom out to watch The Color Purple (my favorite Broadway show of all time) and August Wilson plays, to try and return the favor. My mom did such a great job of raising my sister and me to be so educated and aware of blackness growing up in a society where we were taught to hate ourselves more than anything. Despite everything being stacked up against us, the mental tax that comes with existing in this oppressive system on the daily, I’m so happy every day to wake up and be black. There isn’t a more resilient group of people, despite those trying to stomp out our existence and dehumanize us. The power of black joy is unmatched: the music, the art, the poetry and writing and thought, the culture, the food, and the laughter. It feels weird to tack a recipe at the end of this, but I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you use it as a moment for some self care. (If you read 30 minutes of Audre Lorde, you may have these as a treat.) I took a pic and sent them to my mom when I first made them (isolating alone in my apartment), and she approved and said the crust looked good. Just like a patty from the store, it made a huge flaky mess whenever you took a bite. So it’s the real deal. Always keep reading, keep learning, keep listening. Jamaican Spinach Patties A Jamaican Patty is a flaky pastry, usually tinted orange, filled with meat or veg. Makes like 16. Recipes usually lie, but this time I’m not kidding, I promise. (This is a perfect recipe when your pantry is running low: I got so many meals out of the recipe. Plus, the ingredients are pretty cheap.) Ingredients for crust:
- Kami Beckford, Center for Creativity Student Ambassador. Find Kami's work on her website. I recently led an online writing workshop about the unexpected good and bad of this pandemic. The good is dwarfed by the bad, of course, but it’s there and is worth exploring. In preparation for the workshop, I started thinking about my own experience. On a personal level, there were a number of things that made it on to both sides of this ledger I was making. When several other workshop participants also found this, it surprised me, but what surprised me more was the effect that making the list had on me. My ledger goes like this (many of these also apply in non-pandemic times but right now have gained a high level of intensity): The Good Toilet paper all for me! (Yes, I live with dogs, not humans.) It wasn’t until toilet paper rationing started that I even saw a roll on the shelves. I was almost ready to buy a bidet, because family members said that would reduce the need, and it was a rewarding luxury. We won’t go any further on that. My bathroom is not bidet worthy, so I was very happy to get my toilet paper, just for me. Dozing off without care. Fingers on my keyboard, I stop to think, and there goes the head drop forward and zzzz. Let’s call it power napping. No arguing about what to watch, delivery vs. pick up, money vs. safety and who ate my secret stash of Easter candy. So good. Zoom! Having scheduled conversations with advance knowledge of the topic. This is weird but good. Sound delays, time limits, and avoiding awkward silences have created this need. Also, I suggest you bring props to your next Zoom meeting. People love visuals. Seeing and talking with many of my extended family every week! We go the beach together every year but never thought to have get-togethers every week before now. Being outside many times a day just to breathe and feel the sun. Even when it rains, I go outside and breathe deeply and listen. This is amazing for people who work full-time inside a building with no windows. Sometimes, “I love you” comes right out of my mouth to the sun when it warms my face. Once, my neighbor broke the moment with “What did you say?” My public love declarations stopped. The Bad Arguing (with myself) about whether to watch Tiger King so I don’t feel even more alone when everyone talks about it. In general, watching too much TV, be it PBS or Bravo! No one to take turns with going out into the COVID-19 world. The lines, the fear and guilt of making the mistake of moving too close to another, the judging eyes on my questionable necessities. Zoom! Seeing and talking with many of my extended family every week: 24 screens, with an average of 3 people to a screen, except my little single one. And most of all, Zoom meetings with those Brady Bunch screens and silence: very awkward. Talking to myself. Pre-homestay, I talked often (some might say too much) with humans at work, or when socializing. Now, I don’t Zoom talk much: a sentence or two in meetings, though it really hasn’t become natural. But it’s also not natural for a human not to speak. Luckily, it seems I can talk to myself quite comfortably. And yes, of course, I talk to my dogs. Barking dogs! There is no good side to this. My neighbor dog, Elmo, an otherwise lovely dog, can bark for an hour straight, with my dogs helping out with the chorus. This made me a nervous wreck until I started wearing big headphones and having a dance party of one until Elmo was called in. The ledger goes on. It was a good exercise in relieving the internal pressure of the more serious side of this situation, the serious side that eats away at you: the sorrow for a cousin in NYC nursing the sick, and all the medical people, the food workers, all the essential workers earning low wages for dangerous work, and the greed of people making money off of tragedy. It can lead to some dark places even in the safety of my home, so to look at the pandemic's effect on my own everyday life let me escape from the enormity and feel the trivial. And I am grateful for the trivial. - written by Nancy Kirkwood, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find Nancy's work on Instagram. Illustrations by Mike Campbell, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find Mike's work on Instagram. Have you ever seen a creator’s work and wondered how they arrived at using characters, styles, or themes? I’ve been sketching a lot since I have been home in quarantine and thought this might be a good time to reflect on why I create what I do, and talk a bit about my own themes. Because of my own feelings about making and the nature of working at the Center for Creativity, I continually see and incorporate new ideas into what I’m working on, and I experiment with different techniques, media, ideas, etc. But there are still concepts and symbols that tend to permeate my work. Frogs I only can guess how frogs have ended up in my work. I know it started in my 2D design course when we had to take an image from a magazine and play with patterns and colors around the image. I chose a Pacman frog. I have always had a strong affinity for water and swimming: I love beaches, pools, and lakes, and just walking near water. I also caught a lot of amphibians growing up. Around this time, I played Yu-Gi- Oh and had a frog-themed deck. Eventually, frogs turned into my avatars. Besides my liking of them, as a young gay person growing up in rural Pennsylvania, maybe I empathized with the narrative of the frog who becomes a prince as a metaphor for the way I, like many gay youth, felt awkward and out of place but eventually finds a community and grows out of that awkwardness. Crosshatching and bold lines My high school senior project was on documenting and talking about graffiti as art. Although I was never able to fully grasp graffiti style, I began using the bold style in my doodling. Because I was often doodling to alleviate stress and process thoughts, the repetitive and therapeutic use of crosshatching and simple line-making began to permeate my sketches, and in some classes like printmaking, this would be what I played with when learning techniques. Spirituality Although this is something that has become less overt in my work, I think it is important to talk about some of the spiritual symbols in my practice. I come from a family of pastors and identify as a spiritual agnostic. This developed into learning about themes and ideology of various religions in order to understand my own thoughts and beliefs. Because this development was happening while I was a student, some of the ideas that I have been fascinated with at one point or another have continued to influence my work. I often incorporate figures with no clear features or that are slightly amorphous. As opposed to the frog, where I am often drawing myself and my direct feelings in a moment, these figures are often reflections and meditations on thoughts. I often highlight a major chakra point or convey energy or spirit in these pieces in some way. Human experience and emotion is something I reflect on in pieces, frequently through shading or the cross-hatching in pieces. American society and gay culture also provide their own set of almost religious iconographies that are reinforced through collective experience. As someone in society who has a hand in upholding these, for better or worse, I also incorporate these into my work. If I don’t strongly oppose the icons, I use them without revealing whether I am doing it because I subscribe to them or am simply observing the way they influence others. These are a selection of my recent sketches since I have been in quarantine. I made these all before I wrote this piece, and they inspired me to reflect on a bit of why I was drawing in my current style. - Mike Campbell, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find more of Mike's work on Instagram.
The experiments with making my own materials continue! This week, I made sokui, a glue historically used in Japan and made with only white rice and water. When blended into a smooth paste, the starch in the rice creates a strong bond that is both acid-free — so it won’t degrade the materials being glued over time — and water-soluble. Sokui is commonly used with paper crafts, shoji screens, and in bookbinding; I also found a blacksmith who uses it in making hilts and scabbards for swords. Its solubility makes it super easy to clean up and kitchen-friendly. In my research, I found that sushi rice is recommended, but in my experiment, I used plain off-the-shelf white rice. Brown rice contains the husks of the grain, which won’t break down in the mashing process; even with white rice, I found there were a few husks, but for my purposes, this wasn’t a deal-breaker. With only one sample, I was not able to tell whether or not the additives in the “enriched” rice — such as niacin — had an effect on the final product. The process is very simple: start by cooking a small amount of rice as per the package instructions. I found just 1/8 of a cup of dry rice to be enough to start with. Do not rinse the rice beforehand; in contrast to rice meant to be eaten, you want all those gummy starches in the glue. Once the rice is cooled enough to handle, the mashing process begins. This takes a fair amount of time to fully break down each grain. Some folks will crush the rice in a food processor before cooking, which could speed things up a considerable amount. Overcooking the rice a bit will also help the grains break down. I used an old gift card and the back of a spoon to mash the rice into a paste, working small amounts little by little into a smooth, translucent, and fairly dry paste. Friction is your friend here, so don’t add any water until the final stages when you’re ready to use the glue. The final paste can be pigmented easily; the paste itself dries clear. I added a small amount of homemade India ink. I thought this would be a good chance to try monoprinting. I used a paper towel and the gift card to smooth out the blackened sokui and smudge a design into it. Getting the right consistency takes some experimentation, but is as easy as adding a few drops of water or mixing in more glue. This stuff did not roll out very well with a brayer; it could have been too sticky and thick, which you can see where the paper was pulled away from the ink. The paste will keep in the fridge and can be reconstituted with water, but does get quite rubbery, so it’s best to use it the day it’s made. The result was not what I had expected, but that’s the appeal of a monoprint, I guess! I do like the rough and rustic look in the print; it seems to go well with a saguaro cactus.
This is a simple way to experiment with a simple printing technique without the expense of commercially-manufactured ink. By using pigments found in the kitchen, such as various spices or some of the organic inks I’ve been making from cabbage and black tea, I had no reservations mixing this up in my kitchen. I’m also excited by its potential as a glue for wood projects. Because of the ongoing pandemic, it’s very cool to be able to make this versatile material on-demand and save a trip out. Happy making! Further reading:
- Chad Brown, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find Chad's work on Instagram. Being at home has given me a lot of time to tinker on all the projects I have going, as well as to think about new skills and processes I’d like to try. Having no prior experience, and thus no supplies at the ready, I have decided to experiment with making my own paint and inks from scratch, following several recipes I’ve found online. This is the result of my first experiment: Natural Ink from Turmeric and Tea. This was the simplest recipe I found, and one that I thought could work with household ingredients: one part plant material to two parts water, simmered for 30 minutes, and strained. Thickening with gum arabic was the optional last step, and since I had none on hand, I tried that classic kitchen staple for thickening: cornstarch. I made two batches: one of turmeric and one of cheap black tea. The result was weird. I combined 6 teaspoons of turmeric with 12 of water and set the pot to simmer. Before I even began heating, the mixture was starting to thicken, and within less than two minutes, almost all the water had been absorbed, leaving a mixture like peanut butter. I doubled the water, making a thick, grainy paste, and poured it into two jars to cool. To one, I added a scant one-eighth teaspoon cornstarch. My kitchen smelled amazing. A full 24 hours later, some of the water had separated out of each jar, and there was no discernible difference between the two. The paste leaves a nice vibrant mark on paper that seems durable, but this stuff is definitely not ink. It may work as paint. The second batch was tea. This one worked out better, I think both because I had a larger quantity of material and because this recipe was not meant for spices. As the recipe predicted, one cup of water reduced to 4 ounces of super strong black tea concentrate after simmering and straining. I was able to get 4 ounces only after pressing the thick slurry through my Aeropress, but I think a fine strainer would work as well.
Again, there was no obvious difference between the jar with added cornstarch and the one without; some of the cornstarch seemed to precipitate out as the mixture cooled as well. Unlike the turmeric, this concoction is too thin to be ink; again, the importance of a gum or binder reveals itself. Although I do not have a finished product, there are some valuable takeaways from this experiment as well as the simple joy of DIY chemistry and making a mess to sate curiosity. Sometimes, it only opens the door to further exploration. There will be plenty more messes and experiments to come. - Chad Brown, Center for Creativity Assistant. Find Chad's work on Instagram. |
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