Is it possible to paint with food?

Whenever I cook beets, I get bright red juice everywhere!

Blueberries work pretty well too, in the staining department. You also might try fruit juice concentrates and spices too. Some spices are very staining, like turmeric.

Egg yolk was one of the primary media for painting in the middle ages. The pigments were added by the artists to make the colors they wanted.

You can make your own non toxic paint by mixing egg yolk, water and food dyes. You will have to experiment a bit to get the consistency correct, but it is a fun project for students.

But if they are younger, it can get messy.

I saw paintings done with coffee,similar to ink washes.I wish I had the link.—you could always look at the front of my shirt—XD
I would use a spray fixative to seal that type of painting.

Pomagranite juice, beet juice, coffee, tea, cranberries, carrot juice, beef blood. lol

Add a little chocolate sauce to cherry juice and you can almost match beef blood when it dries.

In ancient times they used blue paint form blueberries.

Skim milk powder was also the ingredient the itinerant peddlers carted around; they added pigments and water to make milk paint.

In order to use dried blood, one must get permission from your state department of health, at least in PA.

@gailcalled

Is there a risk of mad cow art? lol

Pomagranite juice works pretty well

In spite of some of the fine ideas presented here, I would advise you to stick with plant based “pigments” and avoid anything that came out of or from an animal for several reason, including but not limited to, what @gailcalled mentions, having to deal with your state’s regulatory agencies, and just the disgusting nature rotting animal by products, unless you know exactly what you’re doing. And while @WestRiverrat is right, tempera paints used in the middle ages did have an egg yoke base, it was the binder and was usually mixed with mineral pigments, which isn’t exactly painting with food. And it has to be handled carefully and properly. You can’t just throw an egg yolk at your painting.

@WestRiverrat Tempera was traditionally done with pigments and egg yolk as a binder. My husband had an artist from Italy teach a grottesca class at his studio, and one of the things she taught was how to make your own tempera. It’s very cool!

This article gives ideas for painting with foods and flowers, but doesn’t talk about how to preserve them. I know when you make Christmas ornaments out of dough, you have to coat them with a clear varnish or spray on gloss to preserve them. Something like that might keep your food paintings preserved for a while, but not permanently. They might also change the appearance of the painting somewhat. If you have time, experiment with different protective coatings and different foods to see if they’ll last long enough for your purpose.

Or, if the paintings rot, that can be part of the art. :)

I bought several large, gorgeous hand-painted pieces of antique furniture from the woman who used beef blood until the health dept. forced her to switch to casein and milk paint.

Her studio did smell like an abattoir. Marie
Colette

My mom always made our paint for us primarily with egg yolk, water and food colorings. It was something she learned growing up during the Depression. Mineral pigments probably would have been more vibrant, but she used what she had, and it satisfied us kids.

The Aboriginal ladies use food stuffs to make the dye they use in basket making. I have never heard of it being used for painting but some of it has such staining quality that I think using it as paint would be similar to using water colors. You would probably have to build layer upon layer of wash but could definitely achieve some great results. Look here for some examples of the colors of baskets.

yes you can paint with food. (i think you can paint with anything.)
curious about why you’d paint with food though!

i think a resin coating would probably work if you were fixing a piece of meat or something onto a canvas, but i think otherwise, you are essentially just working with pigments in the food…

it would be interesting to see how you could paint with food that doesn’t seem to lend itself well to painting…(like a cheeseburger for instance)

mmm…cheeseburger…

Tumeric for a gold-yellow color, black walnut hulls were used by Franciscans to dye their robes brown; you can make brown ink.

You could also use things like mustard, ketchup, and other condiments perhaps to create colors.

Yes
That guy made a Mona Lisa out of burger grease.

@FiRE_MaN

I was actually considering to a series of pieces with different shades of yellow. Mustard was one of my top choices of medium. :)

The original dyes for fabrics were all made from foodstuffs and insects, as were most paint pigments (including the ground -up minerals like lapis lazuli). For fabrics, you needed a mordant to set the dye.

”Mordants include tannic acid, alum, urine, chrome alum, sodium chloride, and certain salts of aluminium, chromium, copper, iron, iodine, potassium, sodium, and tin. to make the colors permanent.”

I can remember making huge messes on my stove with onion skins and tea and, of course, forever ruining a large stock pot.

Of course most flowers are out of season now except maybe a few die hard muns..but, flower painting is an option too, maybe a florist could supply colorful flowers as part of the project.

Flower pounding is a cool art project.