Elizabeth Pulker

A New Project

Ink Made From Foraged Materials

I took a rather long break after my show last year. I wanted to change the way I was working, or maybe I was simply bored with my own paintings.

In January 2025, I tried a new project: working with straight pen and India ink, I produced very spontaneous drawings of objects in my condo.

This kept me going for several months until I felt ready for a change. I had run out of objects to draw in my humble abode.

Then I watched the NFB film titled The Colour of Ink and was totally inspired.

I was so motivated that I cleared all of my painting paraphernalia out of my studio and created an entirely new setup. I bought a folding table and other furniture, little glass jars and eye droppers, and I reserved a few paintbrushes for testing the ink.

Then the most fun of all was when I went out foraging! My first foraging was to my freezer, where there were some pomegranate seeds, blueberries and blackberries. Outdoors was much more interesting: red sorrel, arbutus bark, campfire carbon and more.

The Process

Not all the inks follow the same process, but I started with the simplest method, in which you boil and simmer the foraged material in water with a bit of salt and vinegar added. You keep testing the colour until you like what you’ve got. Some take a short time and others take hours. Then you add a few drops of gum arabic and voilà, there is your ink. You just have to bottle and label it. I make a little card with an ink sample, enter a labelled and dated brush stroke into my book and label the jar. I have moved on to inks made with alcohol as a liquid. Using oil will produce a printer’s ink.

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I have a little jar out in the kitchen with pieces of copper dissolving in vinegar. It will take a few weeks but it will produce an awesome turquoise ink. There were some surprises: red snapdragon flowers made a soft turquoise, red flax flowers made blue, red sorrel made green. That's all part of the fun! There are so many more things I

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I love colour and I seek to produce brighter colours and interesting colour combinations.
It gives me a reason to get outside and observe nature.
It’s stress free and very relaxing.
There are so many aspects: foraging, the process of making ink, and the necessity of labelling everything to avoid total confusion!
It’s just plain fun, with no feeling of urgency.