For my third Hackathon (a four hour creation challenge) I made my own paints and painted a deer to represent our college.

Pictured here are some of the ingredients I used to make the paints. I used dried rose petals, dried red petals, red clay from my yard, white clay from my yard, and charcoal retrieved from the fireplace in my dorm. 

To make the pigments out of these items I spent about 20 minutes grinding each one. The petals took the longest, charcoal took the least time and had the best result.

To suspend the paint I used honey from my beehives. This was used in ancient paint and was surprisingly easy to work with. The only draw back was the stickiness of the dried paint. 

With the pigments ground and mixed into paint I began painting. I sketched out the deer with the leftover charcoal and started with my most pigmented orange: the red clay. 

The painting was a lot like watercolor- meaning I needed to layer the colors. If I put them on too thick it was very gritty and hard to blend. The charcoal was the finest paint and could pass as a normal paint.

Nearing completion I was impressed with how the paints turned out. If there were more flowers blooming at this time I would have made a larger color pallet. This was something I have always wanted to do and will probably do again for fun. 

The completed piece using 5 colors, all made of natural pigments sourced and ground by me, including honey harvest myself. I would say this is a true apocalypse worthy painting.