How to make paint out of things already in your kitchen

The first painters didn’t have vibrant and smooth oil paints. Instead, the earliest human works of art we know of were made using a mixture of powder from rocks, dirt, bone or other minerals and egg or another wet substance.

According to Google Arts & Culture, tens of thousands of years ago humans used natural elements around them to make paint, which allowed them to leave artwork on rocks and in caves. Their artwork is a clue to what life might have been like 20,000 years ago.

To make your own paint today, you don’t need to grind up any rocks or bones for color pigment. Instead, in this recipe adapted from WikiHow, we’ll add food coloring after experimenting with mixing dry powders and water to make a paint-like substance.

What you need:

What you do:

1. Mix the flour, salt and water together in a bowl.

1. Mix the flour, salt and water together in a bowl.

2. Divide the mixture evenly among jars. Add different food coloring to each jar and mix with a paintbrush.

3. Paint your own masterpiece or use your new paints to complete the paint-by-number art in this section.

3. Paint your own masterpiece or use your new paints to complete the paint-by-number art in this section. (Molly Duffy/The Gazette)