this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
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The Grind & Bind Art Alchemist's Guild

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This is a dark place.

Most art will leave you feeling inspired and maybe even joyful if not a little thoughtful. That won't happen here.

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.

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 grind the pigments themselves. It's for potters who build their own kilns and dig their clay up from the river bed. For weavers who spin their own wool, and, hell, probably know the name of the sheep.

All flavors of inspiration are welcome. Talk about your materials, your processes, post art lore, discuss art-adjacent topics, and share your pieces for questions, praise and critique.

How it goes:

Be kind

Do onto others with kindness and civility. Be curious. Follow the instance rules.

Images:

All posts must have an image, even if you're asking for advice. Post your cat, or your neighbour's cat, whatever. No AI. Please attribute appropriately. Tag NSFW if necessary.

Content

For art, talk about the piece and the process. For media and methods, tell us how you did it. If you're asking for advice, try to be clear and concise with your questions.

Tags Required

[Show and Tell]— Show off your finished or mostly finished pieces.

[Advice Wanted] — "How do you...?" and "Please help, something exploded," kind of thing.

[Info] — Free, online information on DIY media.

[From Scratch] — For all DIY art-making materials. Paints, spun wool, a new kiln, glass blowing studio, bioplastics reactor, etc.

[Discussion] — In the huddle of stained alchemists debate and hugs are equally encouraged.

[Misc] — Anything that doesn't fit in the above categories, but you think still vibes with fhe community.

On Self-Promotion

We all need to put food in the ferret bowl, but let's not talk money here. Do not list prices or link to a personal sales page. Linking to a site that has a sales page is fine as long as that's not the purpose of posting. If someone asks to buy something please take it to DMs. This is a hard rule.

Icon drawn by Wren

Banner image taken by Cottonbro on Pexels

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Did you know you can recycle paper on your own? You can even make paper out of non-paper.

Using my trash gremlin screens made of thrifted silk scarves stapled to picture frames, I've made hundreds of sheets from collected junk mail, packages, and other waste. I also dry out herbs and banana and citrus fruit peels to add or make into paper on their own.

DIY paper is a bit too rough for fine line drawing and detailed painting, but it's a neat vibe for crafts and covers for bookmaking/repairing.

All you need is gloves, a screen (as explained above,) a dedicated blender, a bucket big enough to fit your screen, and a whole lot of towels. The learning curve is shallow, it only takes a bit of practice to get a good sheet. You can get thinner, flatter sheets by sandwiching the paper between two screens and hanging to dry.

These sheets were made from personal paper waste and a dead mint plant.

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