Lu Xiaoxiao rubbed her chin, looking thoughtful. "Hmm... that sounds like a good idea, but there's one problem. We don't have any paint!"
"Oh, that? There are other ways to make paint." Ye Xinglan, who had been busy hammering nails into a plank, overheard their conversation and poked a head through the tree house doorway.
"Take red, for example. The roots of plants like madder contain red pigment. You can dig up the roots, wash and dry them, grind them into powder, then add a suitable amount of water to make paint. Madder paint is really vivid and long-lasting, too."
"Wow, you know so much, Xinglan!" Su Miaohan's eyes sparkled, her voice growing excited. "So if we need other colors, we can make natural paints using similar methods, right?"
"Of course. I only know about this because I once had to whip up some natural paints as props for an outdoor shoot."
Ye Xinglan smiled at her, then continued, "For yellow, you can extract it from turmeric rhizomes or crush gardenia fruit. Actually, September through November happens to be gardenia fruiting season. I saw a gardenia tree in the southern part of the woods yesterday. You could go pick some fruit."
"If you need green, you can squeeze the juice straight out of green leaves. For brown, look for coffee plants or tea plants. Both coffee grounds and used tea leaves can make brown paint. If you really can't find any, dirt will do in a pinch. Black is the easiest-just collect the soot left after burning wood."
"As for other colors... you can find flower petals in those colors, crush them, and soak them in water to make a substitute for paint. The colors will be relatively pale, though, so you might need several applications to get the effect