My Passion Project for STEAM 2024 was eco-friendly homemade paints.

Settling on an idea:

The first thing that I had to do for the project was decide what exactly I wanted it to be. The first idea I had was doing something about art, since that’s a main passion of mine. Then I moved onto wanting to do something with phytotoxicology – the study of poisonous plants. Eventually, the two ideas merged together into what I ended up with today. It isn’t as simple as it sounds, though. I went through a myriad renditions of my project and had multiple parts that I wanted to make. In the beginning, I had wanted to make paints out of toxic plants but scrapped the idea as it was a safety hazard. Then I wanted to do character designs based off of the plants, and make a section on the Language of Flowers and their symbolisms in communication. I’d eventually moved onto wanting to create several rendered paintings made using the paints. However, after talking with my teacher advisors, I’d decided that was too much for a first year project and I’d decided to potentially expand on those ideas in the upcoming years. Now that all of that was figured out, I had to start making the paints and posterboard.

(A photo of the early stages of my posterboard)

Process:

The process was relatively simple once I settled on a topic of research. One of the most difficult parts of the project was making the paints, or rather, deciding on a recipe. I went through multiple versions of the paints and underwent trial and error before finally finding a recipe that worked. In the end, I decided to use vinegar as a preservative, Arrowroot powder for the binder along with varying quantities of water depending on the substance used for pigment. For the pigmentation I used several different spices, plants, powders, and fruits. Among them were Cocoa powder, Matcha powder, Roasted Red Pepper powder, Saffron, Turmeric, Chrysanthemum, Lavender, Raspberries, and Blackberries. In the end I made 15 different paints with diverse shades, saturations, and colours. Among the 15 I had 5 which I held in higher regard than the rest. Cocoa powder (Brown) and Lavender (Light green) because of their scents, Saffron (Yellow) because of its vibrant pigment, Arrowroot (White) because it turned into Oobleck, and Chrysanthemum (Sage Green) because of its color-changing properties. Like Lavender, when Crysanthemum is applied wet it is a vibrant pink, however, as it dries it becomes purple, blue, then grey, before drying into a beautiful sage green.

(Photos of the swatches and close-ups of the finished posterboard)

D-Day – The STEAM Fair:

The project turned out to be surprising hit! Before the fair I’d bought 30 small canvases for people to paint on and before even half of the day had passed I’d run out and had to substitute them for regular paper. I was shocked to see just how many people enjoyed swatching and trying out the paints. I had finished my project ahead of schedule and knew exactly what I was going to say, so the only part of the fair I was stressed about was how much traffic my project would get – which turned out to be a meaningless worry. If I had to do it all over again I would bring more canvases, make sure my paints were better sealed, and perhaps make more pigments. I wanted to make a finished painting using all the paints but had run out of space on my posterboard and didn’t want to crowd my station too much, so in the future if I choose to continue this topic I would like to to do that.

(Photos from the fair)