Milk paint for fine art

(I wrote most of this 6 months ago, but didn't realize I'd never posted it!)

Just-add-water milk paint is surprisingly nice to paint with!

I love art and painting. I've worked with watercolors, acrylics, and oils over the years. But, oils take a long time to dry, acrylics are plastic, and watercolors just aren't as forgiving as I'd like. I wanted to make an exterior, non-toxic sign for our neighborhood, to get people to SLOW DOWN. Milk paints seemed like a fun option to try!

I ordered my paint from Real Milk Paint. I got their "sample" size. It's only 1 ounce, but since you add about the same amount of water to it, it ends up being comparable to a bottle of acrylic paint, and about the same price. I'm pretty sure I can't find these in my local craft store, though, while I can easily find acrylic paint.

I was a little wary, though. I had a hard time finding people who used milk paint for anything other than painting furniture or walls in just one color. I only was able to find one guy who made fine art with milk paint (this is his webpage: Colonial American Sign Company). Since milk paint was used to make decorative signs during the Colonial Era, I figured it couldn't be impossible to work with!

With milk paint, you do need to mix each color individually, and it doesn't last very long before it dries out. But, that's not very different from using acrylic or oil paint. I just mixed up a small amount each time...just like I'd only pour a small amount of paint into my paint tray or pallete.

One thing I LOVE about milk paint is that it dries fast! I'm pretty impatient about paint drying, and there's been many a time that I've tried to put a second layer of paint on before the first layer is dry. Milk paint dries in like 2-5 minutes, rather than 30 minutes (acrylic) or umpteen days (oil). This allowed me to quickly move to the next layer of paint...and also helped keep me from resting the side of my hand in wet paint and then smearing it!

Milk paint is also nice and opaque. If I mixed the paint right, I only needed one coat. That was seriously nice! If I eyeballed a little too much water to paint powder, I needed two layers of paint. But, with acrylic paints, you usually need at least 2 coats, too.

1 layer of white paint

some chunks in the yellow

nearly finished

Milk paint does have chunks. I seemed to encounter these chunks after I'd been using some mixed paint for 30 minutes, and was starting to run out. EDIT: I touched up the paint today, and mixed up a little bit of white. I did not use the "outdoor additive" that I'd used when I first painted, and I didn't have any clumps this time.

I also found it harder to get fine details with Milk Paint, simply because it's so thick. But, since I was using it to make a sign, this wasn't really a problem. Here's the two signs I made, painted completely with milk paint:



Advantages to Using Milk Paint for Fine Art ("fine art" being anything where you're trying to paint a design, rather than painting a solid color.):
 - Dries fast!
 - Easy to apply a color over another color without blending them
 - Non-toxic & made of natural materials
 - No VOCs
 - The paint colors blend nicely when you want them too, too.
 - Historical! It's fun to teach kids about how paint was made in the past, and it's fun to try out historical methods!
 - It's thick, so you only need one or two coats of paint.
 - It's thick, so you can use that to make visual depth.
 - It rinses out of paint brushes nicely

Disadvantages for Using Milk Paint for Fine Art:
 - Clumps can form, which might not be the texture you're looking for. The clumps also make it hard to paint clean lines over top a clumpy first layer.
 - You have to mix each batch. It takes a while for the dry paint powder to decide to soak up water, so you end up stirring/shaking for at least a minute. This gets really frustrating when you have kids who want to paint NOW, and they have to wait for you to pour the powder and water...and then you usually have to help them mix it.
 - Since you mix it, you might end up with inconsistent thickness. But, it also allows you to easily modify how thick you want your paint!
 - Not glossy. (This doesn't bother me, though)
 - Cost and waiting for it to be shipped. If you're making your own, it might be more affordable than acrylic. I ordered mine from Real Milk Paint, and it took about a week to arrive, and I had to pay shipping.

When I was painting my sign, I let my kids paint signs, too!

Painting with milk paint with kids takes a bit more preparation, or it's a bit hectic. Since I was using pre-made milk paint, I just had to add water in the right concentrations. But, each paint needed it's own container, and each had to be mixed, and both kids were chomping at the bit to paint.

But, once I got everything ready, they happily painted for at least an hour on their signs, and had a lot of fun.

Painting away!

it's definetly nice to paint outside, and to have lots of little containers!

Painting with milk paint was also educational for them, because they'd been learning about the Colonial Era, and milk paint was very common during that time period.  

I think using just-add-water milk paint is a really nice introduction to milk paint. The thought of mixing my own paint always seemed far too difficult and overwhelming. But buying premade milk paint was a lot more approachable.

This gave me the courage to try making milk paint from scratch. And, since my kids were learning about ancient civilizations, and milk paint has been used since prehistoric times, I decided to try my hand at making milk paint from scratch! This is the method and recipe that I used:



What I learned is that homemade milk paint is quite different than the purchased milk paint. Here's the differences that I noticed:

1. It's a lot runnier! Unless you add a lot of pigment, it's very liquid. I even tried straining out more whey and not using any water, but it was still very runny. Once you add the hydrated lime, the quark/curds turn to liquid!

2. It takes a lot longer to dry! The just-add-water milk paint dries within minutes, but milk paint from scratch takes a lot longer

3. It's a lot cheaper. I bought the cheapest skim milk, and vinegar is pretty cheap. The largest cost is in pigment. But, I found I could make black really easily. I ground up charcoal in my mortar and pestle and added that to the milk paint. I wish I'd taken a picture of it, because it looked really nice.

Since my kids' homeschool co-op was learning about ancient civilizations, I thought I'd lead a lesson on how milk paint was made, how it has been used by ancient cavemen (yes, there's casein in some cave paint), Egyptians, Minoans, Greeks, Mesopotamians, and Romans; and what pigments they had access to. Here's an actual Egyptian paint pallete, to give you a clue for the colors:

Egyptian paint pallete

To let the kids experiment with historical colorI brought charcoal for them to grind to add to pigment (the kids loved this). I also got red and yellow ocher--just like the ancients used. I wanted to let the paint with Egyptian green and lapis blue, but the actual pigments are too expensive, so I bought colors that looked similar. Here's the pigments I got (the website has a lot more non-toxic pigments for sale):

Yellow Ocher

Red Ocher

Similar to egyptian green

Similar to Lapis blue

I gave them all pieces of wood to paint, and it was fascinating to see what they all did. Most of them did abstract shapes or stripes. I think part of this was that they had no direction, and another part was they were trying to figure out how this very liquid paint operates! I pointed out to them how they were unable to make purple, and that's why the paintings of tyrian purple, just look brown. They couldn't make purple with the pigments they had!

Here's what my son did:

my son's milk paint creation with ancient hues

I think if you're going to be painting something really large without much detail, homemade milk paint is more than sufficient. If you're wanting to do some more traditional/artistic painting, I would go with the just-add-water milk paint: It's thicker, it's easier to make small batches.

I found making and using my very own paint is really rewarding and fascinating process. It's also a great way to teach kids about art history and even some chemistry.

Most of all, I think it's awesome that you can paint with natural, non-toxic, durable materials that have literally stood the test of time!

We were part of a Forest School Co-Op at a friend's house this summer. The kids had already made their own shelter and fort area, and I thought it would be fun for them to paint it with milk paint. I turned a gallon of skim milk into the base for milk paint, and added pigments to it in different jars. The kids LOVED it!

The kids used nearly every drop of paint. They painted logs, long roots, and trees. They had SO much fun! I'd never realized that kids (and humans in general) are rarely just given paint and allowed to paint whatever and wherever they want. They also really loved grinding the charcoal into pigment. I highly recommend grinding charcoal to add to milk paint, as it makes a really affordable paint, and the kids really enjoy using the mortar and pestles.

After they'd all painted with the red, yellow, green and blue paints, they wanted to try mixing colors. So we got more jars and mixed the yellow and green (it made a "barf green" that ended up really pretty), the red ochre and blue (a kind of indigo), and green and blue (for a lovely teal). These few colors made a lot of beautiful designs. The kids were painting off and on for two hours, and the adults had a lot of fun painting, too.

It was nice to see you doing it from scratch and making up a big batch.

I have been painting with casein - which is a milk paint by Shiva. I haven't tried it yet, but I do have the emulsion and you are supposed to be able to add pigments to it and have the milk paint. I know I can add watercolor paint pigments to it and also gouache. I would like to try grinding up stones to see how that does. It is supposed to be somewhat removable when drying, but it does set up and become water resistant or you can varnish over it. I know that your method is cheaper, but this is able to do fine lines that you can't get with acrylic paint.

I love using it and just wanted to share that with you.

I'd love to see what your paint and how it works for you!