Not much of a painter but I think this shows the range of values you can get with shaggy ink if you concentrate it a bit.

Have been wanting to make ink from shaggy manes for a while now. Last weekend I found one growing by itself and a bit too far gone for me (I prefer them very fresh), so I put it in a jar and let it sit for 2 days at room temp. After the bottom two thirds of the cap had deliquesced I strained out the large chunks and then strained again through a fine mesh bag to remove the larger particles. Thought I should concentrate the ink so I put this on a plate in the dehydrator and ran for a couple hours at 40C until mostly dry, I did stir it once. I added equal parts water and 99% alcohol to the mostly dry ink and put in a little dropper bottle.

The ink does have a tendency to settle quickly so you need to agitate. I had a look under the scope and it is literally just spores, doesn’t seem to be much else in the resulting ink. I really like the colour, I would say its a nice raw umber. Smudging after the ink dries doesn’t seem to dislodge a lot of the spores but you’d still probably want to use a binder like gum arabic if you want the real deal.

If you dont want to paint, I did find this article from Forager Chef on how to make a sauce out of the ink.

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