From: owner-scribes@castle.org (scribes digest) To: scribes-digest@castle.org Subject: scribes digest V2 #76 Reply-To: Sender: owner-scribes@castle.org Errors-To: owner-scribes@castle.org Precedence: bulk scribes digest Saturday, June 13 1998 Volume 02 : Number 076 In this issue: RE: [scribes]: Lindesfarne Pigments ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 15:55:11 -0500 (CDT) From: daffy/chiara Subject: RE: [scribes]: Lindesfarne Pigments On Thu, Jun 11, 1998, at 09:17 AM, Thomas Brownwell wrote: > I want to use the colorscheme from Lindesfarne, which seems >to be limited to 4 colors: red/orange, blue,green and > yellow. I have a huge set of Windsor-Newton gouaches. >What colors shouldIuse? I looked in my copy of The Lindisfarne Gospels by Janet Backhouse (ISBN 0-87654-501-0to figure this out, and discovered that there is an even greater range of colors used than I had ever realized. (If you don't have this book, I'd *highly* recommend it for your project; there are many close-ups which show the details really well) Here's an excerpt: "Although it is not possible to rob the manuscript of colour specimens for scientific analysis, much has been learned through close examination of the paint surfaces under high magnification, using variable sources of light. Red and white lead, orpiment (yellow arsenic sulphide), kermes (a red derived from and insect living on the kermes oak in the Mediterranean area), verdigris (green copper acetate), indigo (blue extracted from plants, possibly woad rather than true indigo, which comes from the east) and folium (pinks and purples derived from the tournesol plant) have all been identified in the manuscript. The most exotic pigment is and ultramarine blue derived from lapis lazuli, only obtainable from Badakshan and brought to Northumbria by who knows what long and tortuous chain of trading links. Combination of these various pigments were used to provide many other subtle shades. Gold is confined to a few tiny patches of the Matthew and Luke initial pages, where it is used very tentatively." Maybe someone else can give you good W-N substitutes for these colors, I can only guess from looking at the pictures. The red dots look like cad red pale to cad red medium, varying even on the same page. The yellow is kinda pale, sometimes even watered down to look paler, but not as bright as lemon yellow or cad yellow pale. Verdigris...maybe viridian with a little white added? For indigo, maybe...indigo?:) And ultramarine would be, you guessed it, ultramarine! (maybe even ultramarine deep) I'm not sure about kermes and folium, but some of the reds and purples look to me like alizarin crimson, maybe with a touch of blue added. This is just my opinion, based on my limited observation, if anyone has better info, please speak up! :) > Do I need to add gum arabic to the gouache (I'm used to doing so for my pen > work...)? The red dots look really shiny and raised, and the other colors also seem to have a sheen to them, so I'd say yes. At the very least, adding the gum arabic would make the paint much more permanent. Is it appropriate to use pure white anywhere, and if so, which > one > (titanium, zinc, etc.)? The only places I saw white were on the eagle on St. John's page, and on the hair on St. Matthew's page. Anywhere else, the parchment was left unpainted to show white. Finally, which black (jet, ivory, etc.) would be > most > similar to those in the original for outlining the knots, etc. Another excerpt: " Eadfrith wrote in a good, dense, dark brown ink which contains particles of carbon from soot or lamp black." Sooo... maybe lamp black, ivory being second choice. Hope this is helpful, let me know if you want more info on this book. Chiara da Ravenna ------------------------------ End of scribes digest V2 #76 ****************************