All language subtitles for The.Colour.Of.Ink.2022.1080p.WEBRip.x264.AAC5.1-[YTS.MX]

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[scraping]

[clanking]

Jason: You can really make ink
from just about anything.

These peach pits were carbonized

in an oven for about four hours,

and they started sort of
smoking from the inside.

[clanking]

Crab apples make a really nice
intense vinegar that,

when added to bits
of New York rust,

create this...

kind of amazingly
pigmented rust water.

This is my prized bit
of desert salt.

We could add a little bit.
It will do its magic.

This nice bright blue one here

is copper sulphate
or copper oxide,

and it's got a
little bits of copper wire

that I've foraged in there.

I'm just beginning
this iron liqueur.

I love rail spikes
as a material,

but this is a very
particular rail spike,

which is made for
one of those mini tracks

that goes down into a mine.

And if you make
a bouquet of rail spikes,

you get this extraordinary
living cauliflower shape.

This has been going for years.

This is another one that's
been going for some years.

There's an antique,
like, square nail

that Marta Abbot -
my friend in Rome found.

Well, I'm curious
how the rail spike

compares to the
antique Roman nail.

This'll be the first time
I've ever used this.

♪

[dog barking in distance]

Fire...

sets a sort of
starting point for ink.

The little particles
of carbon are just

floating through the air

and they land on the
inside of this lamp.

About an evening's
worth of soot.

But it's just the most silky,

satisfying pure black.

A little gum Arabic to bind it.

This was used on the papyrus
by the Egyptians.

It was the very
first ink in China.

It really is ancient ink.

That is the
precious matte black.

So, I've been in touch with this
master calligrapher in Japan,

Koji, and I'm really excited to
send off some of my inks to him.

This one is the lamp black,

which responds very much
like Japanese Sumi ink.

So, I'm hoping that
this will be close

to the kind of ink
that Koji is using.

I'm just fascinated to see what
Koji is going to do with this.

This is part of the alchemy -

what these materials do
in other people's hands,

how they bring them to life.

♪

♪

Ink began around the same time

in China and Egypt,

but it was Japan
that perfected it.

And Koji Kakinuma takes
the ancient Buddhist art

of Japanese calligraphy
to a whole new level.

♪

[Koji speaking Japanese:]

♪

Jason: Acorns are everywhere.

I like to just use
the little caps on them.

That's a nice acorn cap there.

And if you add rust
to acorn caps,

you see that it
darkens the water,

and you get this beautiful grey,
silvery-grey colour.

I guess part of what I love
about ink is that in the bottle,

it's a colour,

and when it hits the paper,
it's a sort of process.

I call what I do on
paper an ink test

because it's a way of showing
the active, alive part of ink,

showing what it can do,
rather than just what it is.

♪

I still find this
hard to fathom,

but there's this tiny wasp
that gave birth to the ink

that wrote Western civilization.

This wasp lays its
eggs on an oak tree.

The tree reacts by
growing these galls

that house the larva
over the winter.

The babies burrow their way out,

and then, we're left with
these nut-like shells,

rich in tannins,

and you get this ink
that bites into the paper

and stays there for centuries.

Oh, there's one.

Like around the leaf there.

Leonardo da Vinci,
the Declaration of Independence,

Shakespeare,
every writer in the Middle Ages,

everyone who used
a calligraphy pen,

anyone who signed their name
for a marriage or death

or birth certificate
did it in a registrar's ink

that's made from these
amazing little objects.

♪

We now live in an infinite
library of data.

But at the same time,

the human record has
never been so fragile.

A digital archive of zeros
and ones has no materiality.

Like, it could just
disappear in a second.

♪

Ink is still the most durable
record of the written word.

And for thousands of years,
it was the only record.

These are lines of code
that go back thousands of years.

But the earliest evidence of ink

wasn't found on papyrus
or parchment.

The oldest ink is carbon ink,
made from burning wood or bones,

and its oldest surviving
canvas is human skin

on the mummified body
of Otzi the Iceman.

Otzi was killed by an arrow

and his body pulled out of a
glazier 5300 years later.

He has 61 tattoos,

and it seems they
weren't just decorative;

many aligned with
acupuncture points,

and his body showed that
he had severe arthritis.

From the very beginning,
the ritual messaging of ink

was mixed with medicine.

♪

[tattoo gun buzzing]

[buzzing continuing]

[tattoo gun buzzing]

[tattoo gun buzzing]

♪

Roxx:
I love the power of black.

I love the contrast of
black on any shade of skin.

I make my own ink.

I try and
continually improve it.

The blackest black is always,
like, an eternal search.

[tattoo gun buzzing]

My only thought about ink

is how I can make it
blacker in a safe way.

I like to make sure it's vegan.

A lot of ink has bone char,

animal bones, glycerine -

things that I don't want.

I don't want them in my body.

Sometimes,
I see my work as medicine.

When clients are coming in,

they're a lot of pain and they
want to change their lives.

And when there's blood,

it's a dangerous
substance to have around.

So, I'm always very aware
of how blood is moving

and what it's touching.

But I do think of blood I
n a beautiful way a lot.

That tiny, tiny micro sprinkle

on the top of the
surface of the skin.

[tattoo gun buzzing]

Sometimes,
I'll just have that feeling

to do something like this.

Like this, I've never
done this before.

I haven't even sketched it.

So, things
just pop out, you know?

♪

It's just an energy of feeling
thing, bringing the inside out

and just doing
something beautiful

that flows with their body.

I almost quit tattooing
because I just couldn't stand

to look at one more

barbed wire armband
or purple dolphin.

So, I changed it up.

I started 2Spirit in 2010
in San Francisco.

I wanted to have it

as a black work-only tattoo
shop, and as far as I know,

I think that was
the first black work only

tattoo shop in the world.
And I had a lot of people

that was a safe space for them,

just as a person that's other,

and I was just wanting that to
be a really nice place to go

and you can come
here and it's okay. You know?

But I think that was,
you know, the first day

that I walked into 2Spirit,
when I started working there,

and I remembered the
energy was so different.

I mean, all of our clients say
that it is totally different.

But even walking in
as tattoo artist

who'd worked in tattoo shops
for years, you know,

it was not like a place
I'd ever been before.

[tattoo gun buzzing]

♪

Roxx: I love living here.
We've gotten used to it.

We've talked to people
that have been through,

like, eight-nine fires

Cats: Yeah, lost their
homes three times.

- Roxx: Three times!
- Cats: Rebuilt them...

Roxx: I mean, it's like,
California is for tough people.

Cats: Yeah.

♪

Roxx: I woke up because one of
the dogs was barking,

and I looked outside, and there
were firefighters everywhere.

Cats: It was pretty terrifying.
I've been through hurricanes,

been through flooding,
like, fires.

Like, there's
nothing you can do.

♪

Jason: I just love
the way the live tree

and the dead tree are kind of
in a relationship here

with strata layers -

last year's wildfire
and this year's new growth.

♪

- Cats: What is that?
- Jason: It's gum Arabic.

It's the sap
from the acacia tree.

- [gasping]
- Yeah.

This is way cool.

Oh...

That's lovely.

Oh, that's a nice bit there.

It's so nice
to just go off page like that.

I can't do that with what I do.

It's so fun to do things
with such low risk.

Jason: I never set out
to be an ink maker.

It all really started when I
picked up a black walnut.

Black walnuts are
just one of my favourite

materials in the world.

I was living in New York.

I was 20 years old,

working as an illustrator
for the New York Times.

And I used to get
all my supplies

at this place
called Pearl Paint,

which doesn't exist anymore.

And in that store,

I found this bottle
of black walnut ink,

and to me, it was this--

this absolute revelation

that the ink kind
of grows on trees.

Fast-forward 12 years later,
I'm living in Toronto,

and my first child was born,

and I got really
interested in non-toxic ink.

And I was on my way to work
through Queens Park,

and I saw a little label
on the tree, and I thought,

"I bet that I can make
my own black walnut ink."

♪

I've spent a lot of
my life in big buildings,

at boardroom tables
and in cubicles,

moving little boxes around on a
screen as a creative director

for large corporations

and a graphic designer for
newspapers and magazines,

and there's a ton of ink that
goes into all of that.

But once I got out of
that world of glass boxes,

I was able to forage for my own
colour and find my own inks,

which is when the project
began to take shape.

Suddenly, I had this new role
working with and for nature.

I created the Toronto Ink
Company, which is just me,

and I started sending my ink
out to artists that I love

all around the world.

And then, I started getting all
this interesting stuff back.

Robert Crumb lettering
is just second to none.

I met him about ten years ago.

I sort of tracked him down

and visited his house

in this tiny little
medieval town in France,

and we've had a bit of a back
and forth over the years.

I supply him with ink.

It's funny,
I'd mentioned to Crumb

that some of my inks can oxidize

or change colour over time,
and he got really alarmed.

It was the soot black
that I sent him,

which really is the
oldest ink in the world,

and we have examples of it
on the Dead Sea Scrolls,

and it truly lasts

for an infinite amount of time.

But that really is just
the carbon-based ink.

I mean, most of the ink
that I make is alive,

it's unpredictable,

it's fugitive,
it's kind of on the run.

This is from Liana Finck,
sent from Brooklyn, New York.

I really love these things.

They're so Brooklyn.

I have a feeling there might be

some great tannins
in here to try out.

♪

I am a compulsive drawer,
and I draw to figure out things

that I don't
understand in the world,

such as dating,

and why people
shove you on the sidewalk,

and what it means
to be a person.

When I started
at The New Yorker,

I didn't feel like I fit in.

They're all much older men,

and they were kind
of like mild-mannered,

and not super artsy,

just like these lovely
middle-class New York men

in their 80s or so.

At the beginning,
I was trying very hard

to make that kind of traditional

New Yorker cartoon
that's kind of witty

and distant and well-drawn.

And eventually,

I've been able to become a
little bit more me,

which is more direct,

and immediate, and angry,
and unpolished.

The book Passing For Human
is about being a woman

and an artist,

an artist who's weird.

This took over my life.

It was torture;
it took hours to do this page,

and I did it

because I was making
some kind of a point

about women's work, about
mindless labour of sewing

or cooking and not
being given glory for it

and not getting to use
your brain while doing it,

and that's not called art.

I brought a few inks
for you to try,

so maybe-- I don't know.

Maybe you just want to,
like, colour in...

- Yeah, I want to colour it.
- ...what you've done.

I don't use a ton of colour.

I always like to be
trying to say something,

and I forget what I'm trying
to say by adding colour.

It just feels
decorative sometimes.

Wow, this is freaking beautiful.

These inks feel
like they're living,

like the opposite
of digital colour.

This feels real.

This from Liana Finck.

I sent her flowers
and horsetail ash,

and this blue-green

is the copper oxide
that I sent her.

She's given it this
sort of dreamy, inky,

watery quality.

♪

The world's oldest
ink makers live underwater

and they've been making ink
for 240 million years.

The octopus is a magician.

It's using ink for misdirection.

And at the same time, it's kind
of a living, floating artwork

in the way that it moves through
the world.

It's mutating and communicating
with colour and with ink.

Man: This fossil was
found in Lebanon,

and it's 95 million years old.

Fossils of octopuses
are extremely rare,

and I think this is
the best preserved one

in the world, actually.

When I got the fossil,

this big black blob
was in the body,

and it was a large ink sack.

So, I scraped out 1/3 of the ink

that was preserved in the
fossil, and that crushed it,

and sieved it, and washed it,
and gave it to Esther.

When I mixed it with
a little bit of water,

I saw that the actual
colour is still bit sepia,

the brownish colour
of today's octopuses.

It's quite a lot of work
to paint an octopus

because they have all those
little suction cups.

Every single one is
kind of moving on its own

and in a different
place than the next.

I have three colours here that
Jason thought were really good

for marine backgrounds.

The sepia colour
works really well

with these blues and greens.

And I'm actually going to mix in

a little bit
of the leftover ink.

So, this 95 million-year-old ink

is going back into the seawater.

♪

Jason: There's a grim and
kind of fascinating history

of harvesting colour
from sea creatures.

The ancient Phoenicians
made royal purple

from the Murex sea snail,

which was worth more
than its weight in gold.

They would crush 10,000 snails
just to make enough dye

to decorate
the hem of a Roman toga,

and they almost wiped out
the species in the process.

But there's this small group
of Indigenous artisans

on a remote stretch
of Mexico's Pacific Coast

that carry on a
more humane tradition

of harvesting purple
from the sea.

[speaking Spanish:]

[woman speaking Spanish:]

Jason: I think
my passion for ink

started with the colour purple,
when I was a kid.

It was my mother who
introduced me to wild grapes,

and we would go out walking
along the railway tracks,

which were, um...

The trains were scary to me,
but the tracks themselves

seemed like a kind of
path to another world.

And I remember,

at the edge of
those railway tracks,

we once found a little
stand of wild grapes.

I think that, in discovering

the grapes at the edge
of the railway tracks,

that I was seeing
for the first time

how significant a place can be.

Your dad got lost?
Oh, he was missing, right?

Jason: You don't think you'd
like roasted garlic better?

Being married to an ink maker

is, um... messy.

Girl: Is this good, Papa?

Jason: Yeah, that's good.

It's a bit like living
with the Cat in the Hat.

There's, like, a pink sink

that becomes a pink ceiling,

that becomes pink towels.

Jason: Lux, it's dinnertime.

One time, I found a big,

like, blob of purple ink
on the ceiling.

It goes up in a huge ball,

and it just exploded.

It's like just a weird kind of,

yeah, like,
environment, I guess.

So, it's sort of two
sides of the coin;

it's sort of like a crazy mess,

that's also kind of
incredibly beautiful, too.

Jason: God, there's an eagle or
something up there in that tree.

In the black walnut tree,

there's, like, a giant,
like, bird of prey.

Heidi: Oh my God. Whoa.
Oh my God, it's beautiful.

Winter: It's right over there.

Heidi: What is that?
Look at it! Look at it!

There it is! There it is!

Oh, it's like a hawk.

Jason: I think the
racoons feed the hawks.

I was born Jason Sky Logan,

and my dad gave me
the middle name Sky

becomes, when I was born,
I just looked up into the sky

and there was, like,
a faraway look in my eyes.

And I don't know how old I would
have been in this picture.

That looks like seven.

By that time, my mother had
already been diagnosed

with Hodgkin's disease,

and by the time I was nine,
she was dead.

My dad is a
United Church minister.

We grew up in a sort
of hippie version

of a religious household.

They had a deep
sense of spirituality,

and part of that was
about being in nature.

Here's me as a young forager,

collecting dandelions.

I just collected some
dandelions this morning.

I've been on, like,
a yellow project.

Here I am playing
in the oak leaves.

Like, it's like nothing's
changed at all.

I know and you know that
all of us are broken

and all of us are whole,

and that in the
sharing of the breaking

that we share with each other.

[all humming]

♪ Father of night,
father of day ♪

♪ Father who taketh
the darkness away ♪

[humming]

Jason: My dad was a real
kind of carpenter and builder,

and he's a manic depressive.

My mother was kind of dying

from some of my
earliest memories.

She was often in the hospital.

There was a film made about her

and there were, like, cameras

kind of in our lives.

I think she might get better,

but I think she
wouldn't get better

more than I think she would.

Woman: So, do you think
she'll get sicker

or she'll just sort of
stay the way she is?

She'll make-- like, Amy said,
but she'll probably--

and then,
she'll probably get sicker...

...and then die.

[adult Jason:]
It felt funny to have a camera

in the midst of my family.

And yet, that film
captured some moments

and some sort of revelations
about who my mother was.

All my sort of joyful memories

are of being alone and
building my own worlds.

I remember that
feeling of joy, too, of, like...

climbing trees and jumping,
leaping, and exploring.

♪

There's so much
vivid colour in nature,

but it's hard to capture.

This goldenrod just is
screaming out "yellow",

but then you end up with a kind
of quiet chartreuse colour.

Green is even more elusive.

You can't make it
from mushing up leaves;

they just turn like
a watery tea colour.

But as it turns out,

nature's hiding green
in the strangest of places.

These little, tiny,
dried up raisins

are actually buckthorn berries.

I've got some
buckthorn juice here.

And...

we add a bit of lye.

Lye is made with the
white ashes of pear trees

that have had rainwater sifted
very slowly through it.

And when it's finished
doing its magic,

it kind of gives you
this nice bright golden,

yellowy-green.

Some of ink's
most vital ingredients

are completely colourless,

like lye, or water, or salt.

Not all salts are the same.

If you take salt
that is crystalized

in an ancient lakebed, with
trace elements borax

and gypsum, it's
gonna behave differently.

It will bring a subtle variation
to the character of the ink,

an imprint of the
place it comes from.

Tastes like salt.

Tastes good, actually.

The salt sort of
brightens the colour

and helps it dig into
the cotton of the paper.

That's a nice piece.

♪

Part of what I'm hoping to do
is draw people's attention

to minute differences,

and by looking at
the minute differences,

you're sort of...

slowing people down,
having them think about

how place and materials
come together.

♪

♪

The Earth has been writing
and rewriting its story

far longer than we have.

It's a storyline written in rock

and through rock
over billions of years.

Nature has been doing
its own ink making,

its own calligraphy.

Beautiful soft white chalk.

That's just
nature's art supply there.

Look at that.

♪

♪

Ahh...

Okay.

[blowing]

It's hydrated iron,
which is what ochres are.

It's what gives it
that kind of colour.

Jason: Heidi Gustafson
runs an ochre sanctuary.

She protects the ochres,

she investigates them,
she uses them for healing,

and she works with
people all over the world -

physicists, art historians,
environmentalists,

and Indigenous people
in particular.

Heidi:
What this colour is

is excreted bodies
of tiny bacteria.

They've taken the iron
that was free in the water

that was weathering out
of the soil in that ditch,

and they're-- basically,

they get their energy by having
the iron combine with oxygen,

and they make an iron oxide
out of that process.

So, it's changing
the state of the iron

that's free in the water through
their body, creating this ochre.

Ochres have a lot of wisdom,

like this one, which comes from
Johannesburg, South Africa,

and it's used by the
healing doctors there.

It's formed for the shape
of the hand, you know,

wants to be touched,
it wants to be used by people.

And it's rubbed
like this, right?

And then,
has a really strong smell.

People put it on their face

before they do
any healing practices

to sort of protect themselves.

This is from Wadi Rum
in Jordan,

from the Mountain
of the Plague.

This material is super red,

and has a historical lineage

of being used for
internal medicine.

This is an iron oxide
hematite,

so that means
"the stone that bleeds".

The particle sizes are changing,

that's where more of
the blood tone is coming out.

Just add liquid and you
basically get something

that looks like blood,
it smells like blood,

it has the same
makeup as our blood,

but it's from the core
of the Earth-type of rock.

It's the blood of the earth.

Horsetails,

in the old coastal
environment here,

the roots mineralized
into hard bits of iron.

- They actually become...
- Holy cow.

...iron fossils.

Jason: They grow along
train tracks, too,

and I've always loved
train tracks.

Heidi: Yeah.

Kind of just wanted to do an
experiment with horsetails.

Heidi gave me these fossilized
ochreized roots of horsetail.

The ochre kind of takes the
shape of the old root.

Actually, you can see
the root is still inside there.

It's crumbly...

and rich.

Ochre always kind of
has a life of its own,

but it's really-- it's amazing
orangey oxidization inside.

Colour is a language,

and humans first began
to record the world

with a colourful
dust made of rock.

That rock is red ochre.

It's our oldest pigment.

And for me, ochre is ink.
It's ink because it's lasting

and it communicates
in a ritual way.

♪

Man: My totem poles are
like 18 to 50-60 feet.

In Haida Gwaii,
I must have worked on at least

eight to ten different
monumental polls

that have stood
in the community.

Historically, there was
different pigments used.

It'd be like a red oxide,
sometimes like a carbon black,

or a bone black.

There's a blue-green

that's actually
quite a coveted colour.

One of the crests that
the Naikun people have,

which is my clan,

there's a hat in the--

that's like a
supernatural dancing hat

in a blue-green colour.

I don't use natural
pigments too often,

but it's something
I like to do.

I always like experimenting
with old techniques,

just like the tattooing that
I got interested in -

traditional hand poke tattooing.

When I was young,
I was more into the urban scene

of hip hop culture,

which one of my
main practices was graffiti.

My uncle Christian,

who was my first teacher,

he saw that could be probably
transferred into carving.

Yeah, there's just a certain...

feeling of...

respect, I guess,

to your ancestors, when you
do things in the same way.

You know, colonialism

tried to take away everything
we had as hard as they...

could try.

They did all means to stop this
from happening right now.

Yeah, so, on this piece,

I'm gonna use inks from Jason,
and kind of experimenting a bit.

The black is pulling quite
nicely with the brush.

Copper blue made
from copper scraps,

crab apple vinegar,
and Death Valley salt.

These are kind of typical
placements of the colours.

On a lot of old masks,
you'll find this blue-green

around the eye socket.

So, this one looks...

Applies more like a wash...

...which is actually nice.

♪

Jason:
Making a classic red,

the colour of blood
or fire engines,

has never been easy or safe.

Cinnabar has been used for
thousands of years.

It's just that it's toxic
and full of mercury.

But the Aztecs made
a deep non-toxic red

from cochineal insects
that fed on cacti.

Spain's conquistadors
plundered this precious red,

along with the gold and silver,

and kept its source a trade
secret for 200 years.

And Mexico remains
a mecca for natural colour.

♪

[woman singing in Spanish]

♪

[woman singing in Spanish]

I have 25 years on this farm,

and I make ink
from the cochineal colour.

This is my laboratory.

Like, make extraction the colour

and experiment different
ways to make the ink.

Jason:
Can you bring me to the insects?

Manuel: Sure.

Please follow me.

The cochineal
is a pest to the cactus.

When the baby found the place,
use the proboscis,

and it start to
absorb the juice.

When the cochineal
metabolize the juice,

and transform it
in a red solution.

The females live three months,

and each three months,
I collect the dead mothers.

♪

Jason: People often ask me
about the difference

between ink and dye,

and it's a fine line.

Both are basically
coloured water.

But ink moves across paper

and dye saturates fabric.

Is this one ready or it
needs a bit more time?

Fidel: It needs more time.

It needs more
cochineals and more time.

Jason: A lot of my understanding
about how natural colour works

comes from the tradition of
women and natural dye -

dyeing yarns or
wools or fabrics

hundreds and hundreds
of years ago.

The sort of science and craft

of Indigenous dye-making
goes even deeper,

and it goes a long way back.

[Maria speaking Spanish:]

Maria: This is Indigo.

That pigment, in my culture,

Zapotec used this one,
to have a problem for the...

- Jason: Like circulation or...
- Uh-huh.

Love this colour.

Maria: Touch now -
more soft and fine. You know?

- Jason: Like velvet.
- Maria: Yeah.

♪

Margaret: I do early drafting
in handwriting.

I take notes
and handwriting.

And they now know that
writing notes on paper

is the best way
of learning things.

Just underlining them
digitally doesn't work

because you're not actually
inscribing them on your brain.

When you write
with your hand,

it's the old platform
that we've had for many,

many thousands of years.

I made you
a special red ink.

Oh, thank you.
This looks stunning.

It's made
of Wycliffe brick dust.

I sort of tried to put
everything that I know of

that makes red
into this ink.

Margaret: Very nice.

Then, if you did a little
overlay,

you could make it darker.

Jason: Yeah.

Margaret:
And how long will this last?

Jason: Um...

Margaret: We don't know.

We do not know yet.

Margaret:
Yeah, so that's interesting.

Should it be ephemeral?

Should it, on the other hand,
be long-lasting?

Should it be
the Book of Kells?

Jason:
Well, I sort of feel like,

if you want archival ink

that behaves the same
every time and is UV proof

and will last forever, that--

Margaret:
That you're not their guy.

Jason: That you go to the art
supply store and get that.

Margaret: Okay.

Jason: This ink might fade

or it might start
to crystallize a bit

because there's some Roman
vitriol in there,

which is like a form of iron.

It might get darker,
it might get lighter.

Like, I kind of
liked the element of...

...of it being alive

What have you drawn there?

I've drawn a couple
of ephemeral people.

So, these are--
these are handmaids?

No. They're just people
where they need not be,

and it's not everything in
a red dress is the handmaid.

[chuckling]

♪

♪

Jason: People love pink.

I get more requests
for pink

than any other colour,
except black.

And Grace Lynne - this painter
in New Jersey - wants both.

Let's try the...
cactus flower.

[Jason muttering
indistinctly]

This is calamine lotion.

This screams out for
a little lamp black.

It's got dendrites.

♪

People often ask me
about the difference

between ink and paint,

and I think it's really
in the way that it moves,

the way that it acts,
almost with a mind of its own.

It's very intuitive
to work with ink

because you can't really
control the medium too much.

You kind of have to let it
do what it wants to do

and kind of go with the flow.

The lamp black is really fun
to experiment with.

You can layer it,
which I really appreciate.

So, you decide what
kind of intensity you want.

And I'm looking at
kind of pushing style

of the work,
in terms of the black skin

and exploring
how that could look.

When I was a new graduate,

we didn't have
any models of colour.

And so, I didn't know how to
paint darker skin tones.

And so, when I wanted to work on
my own personal paintings,

I didn't really know how to
approach the painting

because I didn't
know how to paint,

like,
my friends or my even myself.

So, I've just painted
the skin pitch-black

kind of as a way of
kind of rebelling,

and that eventually ended up
being my signature style.

♪

Jason: This is for Yuri,

who does such
delicate work with pink

and is a fan of cherry blossoms.

I've got cherry blossoms
in the backyard,

but they're so pale
and barely pink at all.

But the darkest form

of the crab apple blossoms
make a really nice ink.

And I mix those with the cherry
sap,

so it's still got
cherry in there.

And I also often use wild apple
vinegar as my intensifier.

It's kind of more
like a wash than an ink,

and I'm hoping that Yuri can do
something magical with it.

♪

Yuri: I had lost my entire
family when I was 28.

They left one by one, you know.

When the Japanese earthquake
and tsunami happened,

such astonishing numbers
of people washed away,

my loss came back
with deep emotion.

Then, I heard
the cherry trees

were blossoming
among the ruins,

that inspired me.

So, I did this
mandala-like painting

of cherry blossom petals.

I painted the petals
one by one,

like a monk counting
prayer beads.

Then,
I started to see each pedal

as each life who had to leave
the loved ones behind,

and it made me feel that
I need to mourn them.

So, this is my mother's ink

that she had used
when she was alive.

When I grind her ink,

I feel, like,
connected with her.

When we go to funeral
in Japan,

we have a courtesy

that we
don't use dark black ink.

We use grey ink
to write your name

and bring some money.

That means you are not prepared.

You didn't have
much time to make ink

because it was very sudden.

So, it's a part of condolence.

That's why we write
with the grey ink.

I gently wrapped
around each petal,

like hugging with the grey ink,

not black, like warm tears.

So, that whole
process is healing.

Rudy got diagnosed with cancer.

I was very devastated,

but I decided not
to do the surgery.

Then, right after
I made decision

about not doing surgery
because it's too much,

I was diagnosed cancer -
breast cancer,

and it's the stage zero to one.

But I have to do the surgery,
the mastectomy.

And one day, I thought

maybe
I could use Rudy's blood

in this particular series

that I've been working on,
which is unbroken line.

The whole idea is just line.

I try not to
illustrate life stories,

but it tells a lot,

and I want to paint this

unbroken line with blood.

♪

Jason: So, this is Rudy's blood,

but Yuri sort of
changed directions

and asked for blue ink,
a healing blue ink

because her dog Rudy had gone
through this medical procedure

and ended up with blue eyes.

I think I feel like
just being really...

simple about this.

I've never worked
with blood before.

For Yuri, I immediately
thought of Prussian blue

from these little blue ink cubes
used to whiten laundry,

and it was invented
by accident in 1704

by a German paint-maker
working in an alchemists lab.

Some animal blood contaminated
a batch of cochineal red;

that red turn to electric blue.

In the Renaissance,
if you wanted a bright blue,

the only choice was lapis lazuli

or ultra-marine, which was
ridiculously expensive.

When painters discovered
Prussian blue,

it was a revelation.

Prussian blue is actually on the
World Health Organization's

list of essential medicines,

and it's actually
used to treat cancer.

In general, I don't work with
synthetic components at all,

but it's non-toxic,
it's healing,

and it just has this, like,
history to it.

A little bit of saltwater.

Feels like,
because Prussian blue

was created with
a drop of blood,

maybe it needs a little
drop of blood to activate it.

This is the colour
of the bottle?

Jason: This is--
no, this is ink.

What?

Prussian blue was a colour
that happened by accident

because of blood contamination.

So, this has the blood.

Yeah, yeah,

and it's together--
weirdly, together,

it's like-- it's nontoxic,
it's medicinal,

and it makes this crazy,
beautiful bright blue.

I love that there's
a component of medicine.

Medicine, yeah.

I think there's medicine in--

I really do think there's
medicine in ink.

Rudy, this is yours.

I mean, this is both of ours.

♪

♪

♪

♪ Blue

♪ Songs are like tattoos

♪ You know I've been
to sea before ♪

♪ Crown and anchor me

♪ Or let me sail away

♪ Hey, blue

♪ There is a song for you

♪ Ink on a pin

♪ Underneath the skin

♪ An empty space to fill in

Jason: If black
is where ink began,

blue is where it went.

From the fountain pen to the
Bic, blue went everywhere.

Blue was the new black.

[gun firing]

Man: Hey.

How's it going?

I'd like to check out
your I, J, and C.

Okay. Mm-hmm.

So, this is .22 calibre.

Do you know what that metal is
that's around the barrel?

It looks kind of blue.
I'm not really sure.

- Okay.
- I'd have to ask.

Do you have a magnet back there?

Um, I do not.

I think that this is gotta
be like regular old iron;

is just got a blue finish.

- Mm-hmm.
- Cool.

I think it will work
for what I'm planning.

Okay.

[clicking]

[clicking]

I get all my guns
at the pawn shop.

They have a nice selection
of antique guns,

made mostly out of iron.

But there's never
just iron in it.

Most all guns are made
from an alloy known as 4140,

which has got traces of sulphur,

and carbon, and
molybdenum, and chromium.

In fact,
it's known as 'chromoly'.

I don't worry so much about
the chromoly elements.

The sulfuric acid sort
of takes care of all that.

♪

Occasionally, my father will
request to shoot a gun

before I put in acid,

because he misses his
gunsmithing days.

I don't shoot the guns.

I know what it feels
like to shoot a gun.

I'm more interested
in getting them processed

and on the way.

Guns are very potent objects.

They're haunted objects.

I like to think of
taking that quality

and transferring it
to something else,

a different medium.

This goo goes by
many different names.

Green vitriol is, of course,

what it's
probably known best, as.

Now, it'll dry out and
become more crystalline -

salt of iron sulphate -

sort of like a beach
sand, only green.

This is a little bit
of sodium hydroxide.

And this gloopy,
gloppy mess

is magnetite -
black iron oxide -

also known as Mars black.

It's one of my very
favourite pigments,

and it does fun tricks
with a magnet.

To me, ink is defined
by its preciousness,

and it's really the
investment in the ink

that a person makes
that gives it its power.

It's the investment a
person puts into the material.

Guns are kind of, like, the
opposite of that in a way.

They take stuff away a lot.

But they produce
so much pigment.

I calculated it once.

It was a rifle barrel,

and I was trying to figure out

how much ink I
could get out of it,

and my math was certainly off,

but I believe you can get

about 1100 King James Bibles
worth of ink

out of a single barrel
of a Remington rifle.

Jason: When I first
started my company,

it started with the mail,

sending out little
messages in a bottle,

and it's amazing to get this
message back in a bottle.

But, you know, even
though it started

as this sort of physical
thing, it really is...

The thing that's
made it take off is Instagram.

I started to notice that
there was this sort of

stirring of foragers,
witches, mad scientists,

plant specialists,
chefs, activists,

all these thousands of people
out there around the world,

grinding and
pulverizing and boiling

in that same
communion with stuff.

People are looking for some kind
of transcendence, you know?

They find some sort of
higher spiritual plane

in being out there in nature.

And I think
what I'm noticing

is kind of just
the opposite;

that when you get close
enough to nature,

having the stuff in your hands

gives you a kind of
radical humility -

something that maybe we,

as humans, need right now.

♪

♪ If I could make a wish

♪ I think I'd pass

♪ Can't think of anything

♪ I need

[chattering]

♪ No cigarettes

♪ No sleep

Eucalyptus, very famously.

will make ink,
but a reddish bark or leaves,

I find, is often
quite promising.

I'd say just take
an hour and wander.

♪

♪ Sometimes

♪ All I need is the air
that I breathe ♪

♪ And to love you

♪ All I need is the air
that I breathe ♪

Woman: I think I want,
like, more red.

[chattering]

♪ All I need is the
air that I breathe ♪

Getting there.
[chuckling]

♪

I don't know if
I'm turning it up or down.

[chattering]

Man: Yeah, look at that.

Woman 2:
Ooh! What?

These are clam shells.

So, you can have
a kind of shell white

with a little bit of,
like, chalk white.

Woman: Yeah, you wanna do that?

Man: Sure.

♪ Has left me peaceful

Woman: Ooh, that's nice.
That's nice.

Man: That's beautiful.

Woman: Yeah.

White on white.

I'm often asked
why make white ink,

and my first answer is always,
"Well, why not?"

My second answer
has to be drywall.

It's a building material that
I can find down the street,

and it goes all the way
back to the pyramids.

It's hard and white for
the same reason that teeth,

bones, shells,
and chalk are white -

it's calcium.

♪

♪

Marta: Pretty
otherworldly here.

Jason [on phone:] It looks like
there's a painting behind you.

It feels like there's a
painting behind me. Definitely.

Jason: Where are you?

I'm standing in
the Calacatta Borghini,

in Carrara,
in the Apuan Alps.

It's one of the oldest
quarries here in the area.

The Romans made some
of the first cuts here,

and so Michelangelo
found his David here,

and the Pantheon is made from
stone that comes from here.

The owners of the quarry
were pretty curious

and sort of perplexed at why

I was collecting
this marble dust.

I don't think
anyone's ever tried

to make use of it
in liquid form.

Jason: Can you send me a little
bag of this marble dust?

Marta: Yes, of course.

♪

Soraya: Oh, lovely.

Jason: "Soraya, I reground

"and resifted the
Carrara marble dust -

"itself an
intensification of shellfish

"and their calcium-rich bones,

"now the cliffs overlooking
the Mediterranean Sea."

Soraya: White ink can be
a little bit tricky.

Just going to cover
the nib of my pen,

that will help absorb the ink,

and just give me a bit
more time with it.

The paper is Nepalese
in origin,

but then was treated in
Istanbul with egg whites.

♪

One of the very first verses in
the Quran that was revealed

refers to the pen.

So, the pen was sanctified
from the very birth of Islam.

And in fact, there are
a couple of Quranic verses

that talk about ink.

And so, I'm writing one of
those verses from the Quran.

The white ink
doesn't hide anything.

It does reveal
every move of the pen,

and it's quite nice to see that.

I usually write in black ink,

but it's still the same method
of working, the same approach.

Your eye is carefully
looking at the space

that that ink is about to enter,

and you need to just be
aware of that space,

particularly in
Arabic calligraphy,

where you have set proportions.

You need to be
aware of how long

you make that letter alif,

how does it relate to
the letter that follows.

It's not just scripture.

It becomes
very meaningful,

and you access
an almost...

it feels like
a deeper meaning

or deeper attachment
to it

by writing it.

For me,
it's always been through--

my experience of Islam
has been through beauty;

it's through-- through love,
through the arts,

through the inspiring
verses of the Quran

that talk about ink,
and oceans, and pens,

knowledge, and angels,

and light,
and gardens of paradise.

So, my experience
is very different

to the one that's
fed back at me constantly,

relentlessly through the media.

This verse loosely
translates as,

"If the sea were ink to write
the words of my Lord,

"then the sea would run out

"before the words of my Lord,

"even if another sea were
to be added like it."

♪

I have a one idea.

Mars and magnetic.
[laughing]

Magnetic.

[laughing]
Magnetic!

Oh, my gosh.

Jason: Koji has asked
for magnetite ink,

and this is no small order.

Koji's a kind of rock star
among Japanese calligraphers.

He creates these wild,
iconic works,

and he performs them
on a massive scale.

I'm gonna need
a lot of magnetite.

I've been told that
there's this ghost mine,

hidden deep in the bush
near Bancroft.

There's nothing left,

the mine has gone, that town
is gone, the railway's gone.

But apparently,

there's a motherlode of
magnetite up there.

And we're just starting
to come across

a pile of rock here on our left

This is our ore pile.

Just about any rock that we
stand on here

or we pick up here is
going to have magnetite.

There we go.

Jason: Oh, yeah.

So, that's crushed up
bits of magnetite dust.

Kind of harvest the
softest bits from the end.

They keep kind of falling
back onto the magnet.

At this rate,
it's gonna take a while.

This is an insane amount
of magnetite dust.

For me, it's very
important that the particles

are hand ground for Koji,

but also that
they're fine enough

that they'll be
suspended in water.

I'm getting kind of
an orangey tone.

It's black, but it's...

There's some sort of
rusty tones in there.

Dry ink is something I've never
experimented with before,

so I'm just really
wanting to get it right.

Do you want to put the label on?

- There?
- Jason: Yeah.

All right.
Ready for shipping.

[wind gusting]

[man speaking Japanese]

[Speaking Japanese]

Hmm...

[Koji speaking Japanese:]

[humming]

Koji has decided to use my
magnetite ink

to draw a single word -

"oneness" -

and the character for it is
simply a straight line.

♪

[Koji speaking Japanese:]

♪

♪

[shouting]

♪

[grunting]

[grunting]

[grunting]

[straining]

[grunting]

[straining]

[growling]

[sighing]

That's straight.
[laughing]

Oneness!

Ehh...

[sighing]

Completed today's work.

♪

This is calamine.

Gentian violet disinfectant.

Last little drip
of iodine that I have.

This is Thomas Little's ink.

I've been sort
of saving this up.

♪

That's iodine in calamine,

and that is Gentian violet

with a bit of
magnetic gun ink...

and calamine.

♪

[kids laughing]

Winter: Oh my God!

Papa, that's what I saw!
It was shining!

♪

- Papa!
- Yeah?

I just found this one
and it's violet.

I want to see if it
has stuff in it.

Violet, yeah.

- Jason: Who found that one?

- Eva: Me!
- Winter: Eva.

Jason: Eva, you've
got a good eye.

Here. This whole piece of glass
has a grid inside it.

Oh, wow.

Jason: That's so curious.

Lux: That's snow white.

I've been trying to compare it
to, like, other ones,

but it's, like,
the brightest.

Jason: That's like every single
colour of the city here.

Like, every brick and tile
and, like, bathroom,

and bit of subway, and...

Soren: Yeah.

Ooh, Eva, look at this
one in one colour.

[chattering indistinctly]

Here.

And this was one
of my favourites.

Eva, the one that we like,

consider the ones that we like,
let's put on here, okay?

♪

♪

♪

♪ The sun goes down,
the sky turns black ♪

♪ I can hardly wait for you

♪ I can't believe the madness

♪ In everything you do

♪ I used to dream
in black and white ♪

♪ Now I see the world
in a different light ♪

♪ Your love colours

♪ Colours everything

♪ Your love colours

♪ Colours everything

♪ Your love colours

♪ Colours everything

♪ Your love colours

♪ Colours everything

♪ Oh, oh

♪ Now come in to me

♪ Fill me and fill me

♪ Show me
your colours, baby ♪

♪ Your love colours

♪ I slept in fear

♪ And woke in pain

♪ Till you came
in close to me ♪

♪ I was cold

♪ Like frozen rain

♪ Your kiss melted me

♪ You speak your mind
just like a child ♪

♪ Won't be defined
by when you smile ♪

♪ Your love colours

♪ Colours everything

♪ Your love colours
[Love colours] ♪

♪ Colours everything

♪ Your love colours

♪ Colours everything

♪ Your love colours
[Love colours] ♪

♪ Colours everything

♪ Oh, oh

♪ Now come in to me

♪ Fill me and fill me

♪ Show me your colours, baby

♪ Your love colours

♪

♪ Love colours

♪ Everything

♪ Your love colours

♪ Everything

♪ Your love colours

♪

♪ And who by fire

♪ Who by water

♪ Who in the sunshine

♪ Who in the night time

♪ Who by high ordeal

♪ Who by common trial

♪ Who in your merry,
merry month of May ♪

♪ Who by very slow decay

♪ And who...

♪ ...shall I say

♪ ...is calling?

♪ And who in her lonely slip

♪ Who by barbiturate

♪ Who in these realms of love

♪ Who by something blunt

♪ Who by avalanche

♪ Who by powder

♪ Who for his greed

♪ Who for his hunger

♪ And who...

♪ ...shall I say

♪ ...is calling?

♪ And who by brave assent

♪ Who by accident

♪ Who in solitude

♪ Who in this mirror

♪ Who by his lady's command

♪ Who by his own hand

♪ Who in mortal chains

♪ Who in power

♪ And who...

♪ ...shall I say

♪ ...is calling?

♪