Class Report

Paint With Your Food

Teacher: Mei Mei Chang
Location: SCRAP DC
Documentarian: Erika Rydberg
Date: May 10, 2014

See more photos of this class on Flickr!

Mei Mei Chang is an artist who loves to eat. That passion inspired her to experiment with food as paint, and she soon discovered that black beans tint water a lovely purple. Since then, she’s used onions (for yellow), coffee (for brown), and other types of beans to produce hues.

Here’s how to replicate Mei Mei’s process on your own.

Acquire dried black beans and some nice handmade paper. Soak the beans in water, preferably overnight.

Do whatever you want to your paper with the bean water. Use pencil, acrylic paint, pen, or other media to enhance your work.

Seriously, just go wild.

If you don’t have time to wait around for stuff to dry, enlist a blow dryer.

Matte and display.


Erika Rydberg, a D.C. transplant from the northernly lands of Boston, got involved with Knowledge Commons DC after an awesome experience in a Brookline, Mass., community skillshare during her college days. By day she works at a library and by night she can be found performing poetry, listening to music, or cooking copious amounts of vegetarian food.