Customer Reviews

The Natural Paint Book

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I was looking for a book that would show me how to create natural paints for chemically sensitive family members for artistic purposes. Although the focus of this book is on painting house and furniture surfaces, the recipes can easily be used for artistic purposes as well.

The book begins with an interesting history of painting, which is especially appropriate for a natural paint book, given the relatively recent appearance of synthetic materials in human history. It then goes on to explain the basics of paint ingredients, and compares natural with synthetic components. It is very helpful that the authors recognize that "natural" doesn't always mean "nontoxic" (e.g. turpentine), and their paint recipes help the reader to choose ingredients that are both.

The heart of the book, of course, is the recipes. These are wide-ranging, using various base ingerdients such as milk, oils, lime, borax, cellulose, egg, beeswax, beer, gum arabic, and rabbit skin glue. Most of these are very simple, and have as few as 2 ingredients. The recipes also include information about the most appropriate surfaces and uses for each paint, whether it is washable, and how to apply it.

The book also has chapters on decorative painting techniques (including woodwork and flooring), design principles (such as feng shui and chakras), and design suggestions for various rooms. I wasn't interested in these, but they are well-presented, and if you want this information as well, you probably won't need a separate book. The book is well-illustrated with lots of helpful color photographs which depict the mixing, application, and finished results of the paint recipes.

My one complaint is that, although whiting is used in several recipes, the authors never clearly explain what this is. I had to look it up in another book to find out that it is chalk.

This is a wonderful book: interesting, practical, and beautiful, and I can't wait to try a number of the recipes!

Note: It appears that "The Natural Paint Decorator" (The Natural Paint Decorator: Recipes, Finishes, Techniques) by the same authors is the updated version of this book. Since "The Natural Paint Book" is not available from Amazon at this time, you may want to check it out.

This book was very much what I thought it would be, clear and direct and most useful.