art painting on the moon

Art Painting on the Moon

• Using only materials that can be processed from moondust

• By Peter Kokh• Based on experiments September 1994 and since

“Regolith Impressionism”

• This series of experiments began after we had been searching for inorganic substitutes for various items we take for granted.

• We were researching “adhesives” at the time.• “Sodium silicate” (Na2SiO3) also known as

“waterglass” is only known inorganic adhesive.”• Question: could I mix metal oxide powder

pigments in an adhesive instead of in a solvent?

Regolith Impressionism

• Tom Volkman, a chemist in a nearby specialty pharmacy in Milwaukee (Laabs) said he could get me a gallon of sodium silicate for $9.95 And he could get me various metal oxide powders as well. I would have gotten nowhere without him.

• We took the challenge

• Sodium silicate, while liquid at ordinary temperatures, turns out to ve very viscous. I could only mix a teaspoon full of “paint” at a time and had to use it fast before it set up. I usually mixed less than that.


Our metal oxide palette• Black: Manganese Dioxide

• White: Titanium Dioxide

• Rust: Ferric (iron) Oxide

• Yellow: Sulfur

• Green: Chromium Dioxide

=======mixtures===========

• Pink: mix white and rust

• Orange: mix yellow and rust

• Graytones: various shades of black mixed with white


• What would I paint on? The setters would not have “canvas!”

• I thought of glass, and right away of painting on the backside, fore-ground first so that the glass itself would protect the painting

• What would I paint?• I decided I would try a

few flowers in front of a full moon image.

• I had to carefully plan what was in the fore-ground of what?

• This would be very unforgiving!

Regolith Impressionism“Moon Garden #1”


• The Order I followed1. mask off Moon area2. paint stars & Earth3. paint black sky4. remove Moon-masking 5. flower centers and stems6. flower petals & leaves7. dark lunar seas8. lighter highland areas9. darker highland areas


I began to call it “Regolith Impressionism” because the viscous paints did not lend themselves to fine detail, at least not by my hand

Moon Garden #1 debuted at the First Contact Sci-Fi Convention in Milwaukee on September 29, 1994

• It was next shown at ISDC 1995 Cleveland to which I brought along my painting materials and demonstrated how I worked with them as some of the audience tried it for themselves


• My next painting was called “Greening the Gray” - a fantasy depicting vegetation taking hold on a lunar hillside. Life would come, but inside human settlement biospheres

Regolith Impressioism

• Recruiting another artist, from Toronto

• Megan Storer tried her more skillful hand.

• She painted on squares of Mica

#1 “P ortrait”

#2 “Geology”

Regolith ImpressionismOne last try - subject Mars

“Red Sands - Green Dreams”

Regolith ImpressionismWhy I stopped

• Before the end of the first year, the paint (Moon Garden #1) began delaminating from the glass pane, falling off in flakes. Ditto all the others.

• I tried cleaning and baking the glass• I tried sanding it with metal oxide paper• Nothing made any difference• My hopes that I had pioneered a lunar frontier art

form were dashed

Regolith ImpressionismTime to try again

• Email from Gerald Grott: painting with sodium silicate “waterglass” paints had started in Europe in the 1840s and was known as Stereochromie. “most any of the truly insoluble inorganic pigments are compatable with sodium silicate. However, you must be very careful not to have any contamination with soluble carbonates or sulfates. These are in detergents and soaps so you must rinse surfaces carefully before painting. (I had)

• Magnesium oxide is a good material for reacting slowly with sodium silicate to form a 'permanent' rock like coating. The “bible” in this matter is called “Soluble Silicates.”

• But I hadn’t taken time to try afresh

Regolith ImpressionismReplace Sodium with its Cousin Potassium?

• Meanwhile, perhaps many of us home paint shoppers have heard of “environmentally friendly” “Low VOC” paints

• These are Potassium Silicates: potassium is to sodium as silicon is to carbon - one step above in the periodic table of elements and about equally abundant on the Moon.

• These paints make a very strong bond with surfaces like cementboard (duroc™) which could be an interior lunar building material.

Regolith ImpresionismWhat’s stopping me?

1. I have been overwhelmed with other commitments.

2. Unlike sodium silicate, “potassium silicate” seems to come in any number of formula-tions, all of them proprietary. I could not be sure I was doing something that lunar pioneers could repeat on the Moon. -

3. Time for others to take over?


• Potassium silicates have enormous promise. These paints can be used in production quantities to paint walls etc., not only small works of art.

• Perhaps if I approached the research dept at the leading low-VOC paint company, they would formulate something for me that would meet our criteria for lunar sourcing. Documentation needed!

• Eco-House in Fredericton, New Brunswick• http://www.eco-house.com/silicate_paints.htm

Then in 2009 a glass artist in Green Bay, WI suggested

“glass has too slippery a surface for paints to adhere to” • He sandblasted one side of

a pane 7.5”x8” (19x20 cm) and tried again, painting as I did 15 years earlier on the back (sandblasted) side, foreground first, with careful planning

• The painting was nice, but would it stand the test of time, or flack off after some months?

• A year and a half later =>

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Then, we tried applying our metal oxide powder / sodium silicate paints to Duroc™ - fiberglass faced cement board

QuickTime™ and a decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Where do we go from here?Hopefully, “we” includes some of you!

• I have limited talent but will try to push the narrow envelope of what I have done to date.

• Perhaps a Potassium-base paint company would agree to sponsor experiments

• I would be happy to help others get started and see what they could do with this or analogous paint media on glass or other types of “canvas” so real lunar artists had a head start!

Peter Kokh - [email protected]

1630 N 32nd Street,

Milwaukee, WI 53208

1-414-342-0705 ~~~1-888-266-2385

art painting on the moon

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