Plant and Ink: Make Your Own Plant-based Ink

Color your world with nature’s palette. Create a rainbow of vibrant, sustainable inks from the plants and flowers around you.

Plant-based inks are fuller and richer in color than synthetic types: they are not one uniform color, but instead contain the whole spectrum of pigments found in abundance within each plant. They give you a far greater choice of colors, a unique palette and stunning visual results.

Extracting and storing the inks ready for use is made simple in this beginner-friendly book. The 27 seasonal plant ‘recipes’, which yield 49 colors of ink, are ordered seasonally, to accompany you through the creative year. Discover:

• Warm yellows from daffodils in spring;
• Rich reds, pinks and indigo from poppies in summer;
• Light blue and mint green from sage in autumn;
• Warm orangey-browns from hazel in winter.

Each recipe contains a guide to the plant used, the lightfastness of the ink created, written step-by-step instructions for extracting the ink, and beautiful visuals to illustrate the colors available; handy tips are also included for working with plant-based ink.

For artists who like to work with different mediums, the book also includes guides to creating pigments from your plant recipes, then using different binders to create oil paint, egg tempera, watercolor, gouache, chalk pastel and screen-printing ink.

Plant and Ink is an invitation to embrace sustainability, to see the world around us in vibrant color and to create with love and attention. Whether you’re an experienced artist or a curious beginner, this book will open your eyes to the creative possibilities that nature has to offer.

Judith Rosema is a botanical artist, illustrator, multi-disciplinary creative and sustainable entrepreneur. She was trained at an art academy in the Netherlands, where she specialized in graphics (lithos, lino prints, wood prints and etches). Afterwards she started her career as an artist and has exhibited her work in the Netherlands and Belgium.

In 2009, concerned by the suffering inflicted on the planet, Judith decided she no longer wanted to work with materials that harm our world, so began to experiment with plants and flowers found by roadsides, exploring their dyeing properties.

In 2017 she founded Het lnkt Atelier [The Ink Atelier], a sustainable company which focusses on the production of botanical inks, and organizes workshops, courses and group trips.

Judith lives in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands.