this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2025
20 points (100.0% liked)

The Grind & Bind Art Alchemist's Guild

62 readers
10 users here now

This is a dark place.

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

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 build their own kilns and dig their clay up from river beds, and for weavers who spin their own wool from the fleece they sheared that morning.

All flavors 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.

This isn't the community for AI unless you built it yourself and trained it off your own work.

Please attribute appropriately. Tag NSFW if necessary.

Tags Required

[Show and Tell]— Show off your finished or mostly finished pieces, your DIY art-making materials such as paints, spun wool, brick kilns, bioplastics reactor, etc.

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

[Info] — Free, online information on DIY media. Please include a webarchive link if a site asks for personal details.

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

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

[Misc] — Anything that doesn't fit in the above categories yet still vibes with the community.

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 is geared toward self promotion.

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. Go head and shoot Wren a DM if you have any ideas for this place or want to help out.

founded 6 days ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

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