INKS
What is this liquid colour before me? Beautiful and mysterious…flowing and forming whole histories in a line from a pen.
At Old Mill Arts, we make a wide range of colour-rich writing and drawing inks, mostly using plants we have either grown or foraged.
Years of experience in ink making has enabled us to have a deep understanding of how to coax colour from plants, how to modify colour to get various tones, and the art of processing inks for smoothness or for granulation.
Some of the recipes we used are based on ancient historical recipes while others we have developed in our own studio, with the guidance of our ink making contemporaries whose books can be found in our book shop.
We offer several workshops focusing on ink making.
Our workshop ‘Palette from Plants’ teaches a wide colour spectrum of ink making and our workshop ‘The Alchemy of Tannin and Iron’, focuses in on traditional writing ink making, inspired by medieval recipes.
Our newest workshop, still in development, is devotional ink making, inks for devotional manuscript and journal writing.
Have a look at our workshop program for upcoming workshops.
“Quote”
Inks are beautifully versatile. We make inks perfect for use in traditional writing techniques as well as for use with brushes and mark making tools in creating artworks.
Our ink workshops often include making a reed pen, see more about this on our tools page.
PRINTING INKS
Printing inks are continually being developed in our studio, both oil and water based. In 2024, we developed a range of printing water-based inks for the Climate Kitchen in Dumfries for their new branding. Together we created an environmentally friendly ink, which was used with recycled tetra packs to create lettering for a font which is used in their new logo.
We use a range of pigments in our printing inks, including earth, plant and carbon (charcoal) pigments. Mixed with various binders, they are suitable for screen printing, mono printing, experimental printing, and Intaglio printing.
