# 1. Use environmentally-friendly products

The environment is a recurring theme in my art. I also try to improve my environmental impact in my daily life: I’m interested in learning about ways consumers can reduce their impact, I look for the provenance and composition of the goods I buy (clothes, toys, furniture and food), I consume less, etc. Yet, I realized that I had no idea of ​​the ecological impact of my art practice.

Since I needed to buy new paint, I dig a bit on how it was made and I discovered that although most pigments come at the base from natural resources (plants, metals, earth for example), some of them may be less good for the environment or your health.

To understand better, let’s see how pigments are actually made.

Paint is made of pigments and binders. Pigments are fine insoluble color particles that give color to paint. Binders hold pigments together and allow the paint to adhere on our canvas, paper, wood.

Pigments can be :

Inorganic: they come from earth deposits, minerals / rocks, treated metallic compounds, fused metallic compounds.

Example: iron oxide for an orange ocher pigment or the fusion of cobalt and aluminum oxides to obtain cobalt blue.

Or

Organic (derived from living substances): animal source, plants or synthetic treatment of these materials.

Example: The roots or leaves of a plant are used to create a dye that is then attached to a metal substrate to obtain a pigment (a pigment is an insoluble particle vs a dye that is soluble).

They can also be natural or synthetic:

Natural pigments are found in nature. 

Either from inorganic matter like earth, minerals/rocks, etc. that is grounded, sifted, washed and sometimes calcinated. (Natural inorganic pigments)

Or from organic matter like plants and animals used to make pigments or used to make a dye which is then attached to an insoluble particule to create a pigment. (Natural organic pigments)

Synthetic pigments are artificially produced. 

Synthetic inorganic pigments either reproduce the chemical composition of a naturally occurring inorganic pigment or are new pigments not naturally found in nature that were created from a mineral. 

Synthetic organic pigments come from dyes that are synthetized from coal tar and petrochemicals. These dyes are then chemically converted into pigments by attaching them to insoluble and inert particles. They fall in the organic family as they come from substances that were once living and so contain carbon molecules.

So now we know what are pigments, there are two main reasons that can make buying your own pigments an eco-friendly choice to me:

A paint free of petroleum products

In an era where we are trying to use less petroleum products, avoiding these synthetic organic pigments, synthetized from coal tar and petrochemicals, could be an environmentally friendly step. Note that a majority of the pigments we find nowadays are from this type.

A paint that doesn’t pollute the environment when discarded.

In addition to pigments derived from petrochemicals, several pigments are toxic (we come back to it in # 2) and their binder can also have a negative impact. Since the pigments I buy and the binders I make are non-toxic, I can now wash my brushes in the sink without contaminating the water. Something I had never thought of before, since everyone, from students in an elementary art class to professional artists, tend to wash their brushes in the sink.

# 2 Use products safe for your health

A paint free of toxic substances.

Pigments can come from heavy metals. So not only you do not want to send toxic pigments down the sink, those are also toxic to your health. Think of lead, for example, a heavy metal well known to be a health hazard and nevertheless present in art materials. The amounts present are not going to make you sick immediately, rest assured. Here is what Health Canada says on this: ‘’In general, there is very little risk of health effects on children or other users if they use art supplies containing lead, if use is limited to an hour or two per week. Lead, however, accumulates in the body and can persist for months or years, so materials containing lead should be avoided whenever possible.’’

So for someone who paints regularly, caution is still appropriate, especially since we can be exposed to other sources of lead in our lives. And for synthetic pigments labeled non-toxic, unfortunately, we have not necessarily tested their toxicity in the long term and sometimes we have never even tested the toxicity: we can, for example, compare them to similar compounds and deduce that they should not be toxic, until proven otherwise. They can also be fine for humans, but not for the environment.

I will not give you a complete portrait of all the toxic materials that could be in your pigments, but I hope that this example will pique your curiosity.

VOC-free paint

Acrylic paint releases VOC’s. And while the oil in oil paint doesn’t, the solvents and mediums usually used with it do. Since professional paint can easily be made at home with ingredients that do not releases any VOCs, I can paint at home without risking the health of my partner, our daughter or myself. 

# 3.High quality products that last over the years

Lightfast

Have you ever noticed a painting or picture fading over time when exposed to sunlight? Depending on the materials used, pigments do not all have the same lightfastness over the years. When buying paint or a dry pigment, always check its stability to light to make sure it is excellent or permanent.

Saturated colors without any superfluous additions

Prepared paints do not just contain pigments and a binder. "Fillers" are added which reduce the price of the product as they are less expensive than pigments. Stabilizers are also added to increase the shelf life of the product. By buying your own pigments, you can make a high-end paint that contains only the essential: pigments and a binder for intense colors.

Here are the details of some paintings made with eco-friendly pigments. A selection of colors that will satisfy your palette and above all, rich colors due to the high pigment content of the paint.

# 4 Versatility and conservation of the paint

Dry pigments preserve very well so you won’t be wasting material. I can also use the same pigments to make all my paints: watercolors, gouache, oil and even pastels. This means I don’t need to carry the same colors in all my different mediums, I can mix colors as needed from the same pigments in any medium I wish to use that day.

# 5 Have full control over the composition of your paint

The point that sums up all these benefits! It would probably be possible to find a paint that is durable, environmentally friendly, non-toxic and lightfast in a major brand of paint, but it takes a lot of  time to research the composition of each paint (pigments, binders, '' filler '', stabilizers), the toxicity of each paint, the presence of VOCs and the methods used by each company to find out if all of the company's practices are responsible and environmentally friendly.

Very tedious when you do not have much time available. I was happy to discover you can make binders with healthy and easy to find products, to which you simply add a pigment (I'll talk about recipes soon). Now you only need to find pigments that meet your requirements: I share with you a wonderful company that will save you many hours of research in this blog post! This allows control over all the ingredients that go into the composition of your paint.

The inconvenients :

I like playing the devil's advocate in order to understand all the advantages and disadvantages of a choice, so here's what I found.

Transportation

Nothing is ever 100% free of ecological impacts: for example, transportation of these pigments to my studio generates CO² emissions. And even if there was a supplier near home, the pigments themselves may have been imported from other parts of the world, adding to these emissions. However, this is also the case with the paints usually sold in stores, so it is difficult to completely avoid transportation in terms of paint.

Dust

Even if the pigments you use are non-toxic, it is never advisable for your long term health to inhale large quantities of any kind of dust, so be careful when handling dry pigments! You can use Niosh certified masks if needed. (A dust mask which can inhibit nuisance dusts with a very fine particle size).

Preparing the paint

You will have to make your own paint which can be a positive or negative point depending if you are more or less of a DIY type of person. But I haven’t found it to be time consuming.

Conclusion

I am very happy with this change when I look at the results, which created rich and vibrant colors. One step closer to a practice that has a better environmental footprint so that my convictions are reflected beyond my words and images, but also in my actions.

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