DIY homemade watercolor paint made from crushed PASTELS ✶ Full process and tips

In this video I will show you how I turned my Sennelier soft pastels into watercolor paint. The process is messy and takes some experimentation, but once you figure out your way it's a lot of fun and very rewarding! I have made quite a few colors since this video and they perform the same as my store bought tubes of paint.

I did this live on my Twitch channel. If you want to watch the full process video, check it out here:

Mentioned in this video is this recipe:

My Binder:
9 parts gum arabic solution
1 part glycerin
1 part honey
1 part distilled water
2 drops ox gall
2 drops oil of clove.
I also added a couple drops of iridescent medium and granulating medium by Winsor and Newton.

I discovered that using this ratio and tweaking it to your preference you can make some nice paint!

00:00 Intro
01:11 Recipe & process
02:16 Making teal
04:00 Making purple
06:53 Real time swatches
09:03 Arches cold pressed paper
10:15 Strathmore watercolor postcards
11:10 Fluid cold pressed paper
12:08 Saunders Waterford rough paper
13:18 Fabriano Artistico hot pressed paper

--------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------

[jilliancrawford]

I have found that misting it with water while mulling the pigment helps to mix better and resist the urge to add too much binder. I used to add way too much gum arabic to lubricate the pigment while mulling and of course that weakened the intensity of the final product and adding water first has made a drastic improvement. It's still a work in progress and seems to vary from pigment to pigment, but it helps enough to at least put me on the right track and I recommend it to anyone doing this.

[WeblightDreams]

I love this idea. I have so many soft pastels just lying around not being used. You made two beautiful colors.

[shanividal]

Omg genius!! I have pastel I inherited from my uncle and I honestly didn't know what to do with them. I don't like to draw with pastel. But I love making watercolor paint and color w/wc! You are a true genius

[tenaciouszebra]

My first watercolor I made with ground up charcoal that you’d buy for your grill. I used honey water lol. Once I got all the ingredients for the binder I made a MUCH better version, but they were both fun to make and both layered well

[chungbunchong]

I accumulated a lot of pastels for years plus I have asthma and stopped using them because of the dusting. This is such a great idea and I am going to try this thank you so much for sharing. 😊

[aswie]

Those 2 colors look so much like an Alexandrite gemstone!!! Beautiful! & Ty so much 4 making this video, I've always wondered if this would work & I like the same kind of specifications of my w.c. paint as u. Ty ty ty!! 😁

[LunaBianca]

Wow, those two colours look gorgeous 🥰

[kanamichelle]

That looks so fun and I have always wanted to try making my own. When I fill my watercolor pans now I always overfill them so that when they dry and shrink up I still have a nice full pan. Some shrink more than others though.

[radioactiveferrets]

I have cheap soft pastels laying around not being used and I got the idea to use them to make watercolors from this video! Thank you!

[ninner]

I had done this in the past with the best quality pastels because they would be almost completely pure pigment and like you I wanted the flow so I did add ox gall and of course gum arabic and it all works out great. Enjoy your painting!😊

[danieljamesbinderystu]

To those of you wanting to this, it is a great idea and can work very well.... but I did not see her filter out the pure pigment from all the junk and fillers they put in pastels. The soft pastels I buy are Ludwig soft pastels, and they only use Trac. Gum And pigment... thats it, that's why they are extremely exspensive and soft. Most cheap or budget pastels will use ALOT of chalk and fillers to make them more opaque with way less pigment. Now I make my own watercolors from rare earth Minerals and when I grind them down to powder, I add water to it in a jar. Let it sit for a few hours and all the heavy dirt, sand, impurities and junk sinks to the very bottom and all the pure pigment sits on top. There are a few different ways to extract the pure pigment layer off the top and its way to lengthy to type here, but it's not hard at all. Look up " how to make pigment from rocks " on YouTube and they teach how to extract pure pigment from things. Now if she would have done that with these pastels, they would be absolutely pure without all that chalk and fillers still in them, which absolutely kills color and will dry mute, gritty and chalky ( if there is alot of chalk in that color )
Just a tip for those of you wanting to this, it's an absolutely great idea and works 100%, but you need to filter out all that junk they use in cheaper soft pastels. Sennelier soft pastels are also great to make watercolor because the only use pigments and Trac. Gum. Hope this helps someone and have a great day 😀

[RisingPhoenixCreations]

Omg I had no idea you could do this with soft I'm so happy 🤩🤩

[valenmejia]

I have some cheap pastels just laying around for around 16 years now, this seems like a good idea! or at least just crushing them and keeping them in containers

[joelleledoux]

J’adore l’idée de jouer au chimiste ! Tu as vraiment plein d’idées ! Continue ces magnifiques vidéos qui nous apprennent tant. Le plaisir est la clé ! Bravo encore ! Congratulations 🎨🇫🇷👏

[ACVB]

This is outstanding use of pastels. Resourceful! Waste not want not! My question is does the quality of pigment that is crushed make a difference? Well there are different grades of pastels.

[deborahsweeny]

They're definitely some beautiful colors. Tfs

[FloralHeart]

This genius ! I have a box of Prismacolor pastels but I'm kind allergic to powder mediums. I was researching a way to transform them and here I'm. You created beautiful colors, I loved the lavender and purple hues. Please tell me which's the most important ingredient to make granulated paints. I'm not at Twitch but I'll be watching more of your videos. Thanks for sharing !

[yellow]

I’m trying. I crushed my sticks. Used water to make the powder melt. Put them in a mortar and pestle. Combined with binding medium by sennelier. Filled full pans worked well. Put out in heat to dry.

[nauci]

This is something I had no idea I NEEDED to know until it became the top of my youtube feed

P.S. You have THE COOLEST tattoos

[ramshariaz]

Definitely going to try this. So satisfying!