Midwest Book Review – August 2025
Extracting and storing the inks ready for use is made simple in “Plant and Ink: Make Your Own Plant-Based Ink” — a beginner-friendly instructional book by Judith Rosema. The 27 seasonal plant ‘recipes’, which yield 49 colors of ink, are ordered seasonally, to accompany you through the creative year.
Each recipe contains a guide to the plant used, the lightfastness of the ink created, written step-by-step instructions for extracting the ink, and beautiful visuals to illustrate the colors available; handy tips are also included for working with plant-based ink.
For artists who like to work with different mediums, “Plant and Ink: Make Your Own Plant-Based Ink” also includes guides to creating pigments from your plant recipes, then using different binders to create oil paint, egg tempera, watercolor, gouache, chalk pastel and screen-printing ink.
Critique: Original, extraordinary, and thoroughly ‘reader/user’ friendly in organization and presentation, “Plant and Ink: Make Your Own Plant-Based Ink” by Judith Rosema is an unusual, invaluable and recommended addition to personal, professional, community, art school, and college/university library collections. It should be noted that this large format trade paperback edition of “Plant and Ink: Make Your Own Plant-Based Ink” from Search Press is also readily available in a convenient digital book format (Kindle, $21.83, Amazon).
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