this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2026
15 points (100.0% liked)

The Grind & Bind Art Alchemist's Guild

136 readers
25 users here now

Good day and welcome to The Grind and Bind Art Alchemist's Guild.

An artist's community for the kind of people who don't just paint, they scavenge pigment from rotten leftovers. It's for potters who dig their clay from riverbeds, for weavers who spin their own wool (and probably know the name of the sheep,) and it's for digital artists who hack away at their creative endeavors.

All flavors are welcome to:

How it goes:

Be kind

Do onto others with kindness, curiosity and civility.

Please include images

Remember to attribute other's work, tag NSFW and Content Warnings if necessary, and describe with alt text for our differently sighted pals.

No AI*

This isn't a community for AI *unless you've built it yourself and trained it on your own work.

Tags are Optional

[Advice Wanted] — "How do you...?" and "Help, something exploded."

[Article] — Selt explanatory. Please include a webarchive link if a site asks for personal details or has a paywall.

[Discussion] — In the huddle of stained alchemists, debates and compliments are equally encouraged.

[Challenge] — Try something new or show off your niche skills. (Mods only)

On Self-Promotion

We all need to put food in the ferret bowl, but let's not talk money here. If someone asks to buy something, please take it to DMs.

!artmarket@lemmy.world and !artshare@lemmy.world are geared toward self promotion if you want to cross-post.

This is a dark place.

Most art will leave you feeling inspired, maybe even joyful — if not a little thoughtful. Not this art.

This is a place of paint drinking gremlins with caustic burns on our hands and ink stains on our feet. A dark, damp basement smelling of bleach and burning and bioplastics, of empty wallets and ephemeral passions, of education, of science.

Most art makes people better, but this place can only make you worse, poorer, stained, and consumed by the craft.

Icon drawn by Wren

Banner image taken by Cottonbro on Pexels

This is a new community, the structure and rules may change without notice. All things are ephemeral. Shoot Wren a DM if you have any ideas or want to help out.

founded 1 month ago
MODERATORS
 

I make avocado dyes and pigments all the time. In fact, dying and pigments are the main reasons I eat so many vibrant fruits and vegetables. I get a lot of fibre.

I keep a jar of water, avocado skins and pits on my kitchen counter that I add too whenever I have one. I keep ot slightly alkaline with baking soda, which seems to deter bacteria growth.

Different kinds of fabrics take to the dye in different ways, with cotton being my favorite so far. Plant based fibres seem to do better with a urea treatment before dyeing, and you can get some very deep, dark purple/grays with iron mordant (I keep steel wool soaking in salt water.)

no comments (yet)
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
there doesn't seem to be anything here