In the last post I discussed something of the theory of ink and ink making. Since then (while taking several weeks hiatus from new posts for the holiday season), I’ve started experimenting with ink making in actual practice.
For a first attempt, I wanted to take a shot at preparing one of the oldest and simplest of Type I inks: carbon black. Carbon black ink is, fundamentally, just powdered charcoal and water, plus a little binder to help the charcoal stay in suspension.
I was working roughly from Jason Logan’s recipe for vine black ink, though scaled down dramatically.1 The original recipe makes two cups of ink, which seems a rather unreasonable amount for an experiment.
The two ingredients required were liquid gum arabic and vine charcoal, so to get started I wanted to make both of those.
Gum Arabic
Gum arabic can generally be bought from art supply stores in two forms: as a powder and as a pre-prepared liquid. I wanted to do as much of this from scratch as I could (or perhaps take unreasonable joy in doing myself what others can do much better) so I didn’t use either option. Instead I got myself some gum acacia (Senegalia senegal) resin in dried tears.
I made my solution by dissolving one teaspoon of these resin tears in three teaspoons of hot water. The resin was not powered first, but simply added to the hot water and allowed to stand until dissolved.
The result was a slightly viscous, surprisingly dark liquid – about the color and consistency of dark maple syrup.2 This was used in the following ink preparation.
Vine Charcoal
The second ingredient called for in the ink is vine charcoal. Vine charcoal is preferred over other types (such as hardwood charcoal) because it is very soft and easy to blend. Given that the goal is to make a ridiculously fine powdered pigment, a softer charcoal (from a fast-growing vine) is ideal.
Logan recommends using wild grape vines in his recipe, but I wasn’t able to find those locally. I did, however, have access to enormous quantities of Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) vines, which have a similar habit.3
These vines were cut into small sections and placed in an Altoids tin. They were charred in a wood stove; the tin was set in a good bed of coals and left there for an hour, at which point it was removed and allowed to cool fully before opening.
Vine Black Ink
- 1 teaspoon vine charcoal, roughly crushed
- 3.5 milliters liquid gum arabic (prepared previously)
- 1 Tablespoon water
The actual ink was prepared by combining the vine charcoal and liquid gum arabic in a mortar and pestle. These two were ground together until they formed a thick, undifferentiated, deeply black syrup (perhaps ten minutes). At this point the water was added, and the ink was re-ground until thoroughly blended, resulting in about a half an ounce of finished ink. This ink was tested using both a glass dip pen and a small brush.
The ink was surprisingly pale – more gray than black – with the shade varying dramatically depending on how much it pooled on the paper. This lent itself well to layering effects. It did not display any notable graininess (generally the result of pigment not ground as finely as it should be).
It flowed very well from a bush, but struggled to run smoothly off the glass dip pen. The latter, when dipped, didn’t start flowing immediately; it was prone to scratching at the start, and then great blotches of ink when the drip of ink finally made its way down to the tip of the nib.
The ink (as expected) was somewhat smudge resistant when dry, but not at all water resistant. When allowed to stand for a day, it had some noticeable settling of pigment on the bottom of the jar, but this was easily shaken back into suspension. Overall, I think this would work very well as an artist’s ink, but is not particularly well suited for everyday writing.
I didn’t try writing with the original charcoal and gum mix before the water was added, but I wish I had. It was much more deeply and opaquely black.4
Learnings
The biggest learning here was that, for both the charcoal pigment and the gum arabic, I should powder things finely before measuring my proportions. I think I undercounted both my pigment and my gum, due to measuring it in its coarser state.
Some additional experimentation with the glass pen is required to see if it can be made to work with Type I inks at all. It is possible the shape will only allow it to flow smoothly with inks that are closer to the consistency of water (similar to a fountain pen). It’s also worth cutting a quill pen for future experimentation.
The vine charcoal actually worked much better as a pigment than anticipated. I was expecting it to either produce a grainy final ink, or require a ludicrous amount of grinding in order to achieve an appropriate consistency. In fact, it was so soft that I think a couple minutes grinding would have been entirely sufficient.
- Logan, J. (2018). Make Ink. Abrams. ↩︎
- The real stuff, not the Log Cabin stuff. ↩︎
- If anything, they grow even faster than grape vines, and should result in a softer charcoal. ↩︎
- I think it would have worked phenomenally well with a brush, or perhaps a quill pen, but would have been even more hopeless on the glass pen. ↩︎
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