Winter and fires in the woodstove are just around the corner. And that means it’ll soon be time to char the bones and antler I use for making a velvety black paint.
It’s a good thing I don’t have to forage those the way I go out foraging for rocks, though. I’d never be able to find one when I need them.
Instead, when I find an old, weathered bone of any sort, I bring it home. And when I find antler sheds, I bring those home, too. They’re not the sort of thing I could find at will. I run across the sheds even less often than the bones.
A Long History
Before fires were intentionally used to char the bones for making a black paint, it was most likely just a side effect of throwing eaten carcasses into the fire. Who knows who the first person was that discovered those blackened things could be used to scratch out designs on cave walls.
But at some point someone further developed a process and art bloomed across the world in dark, sacred places.
Bone can also be used to make a white pigment, and the difference lies in whether the material is exposed to air or kept in a closed container. In the case of prehistoric man, bones buried beneath the ash of fires would have served as the ‘container’ to turn them black.
Char the Bones Before Making the Paint
Here’s some of the posts I’ve made previously on making Bone Black:
