From: owner-scribes@castle.org (scribes digest) To: scribes-digest@castle.org Subject: scribes digest V2 #1439 Reply-To: Sender: owner-scribes@castle.org Errors-To: owner-scribes@castle.org Precedence: bulk scribes digest Thursday, March 2 2000 Volume 02 : Number 1439 In this issue: Re: [scribes]: gouache and eggs [scribes]: Book question RE: [scribes]: gouache and eggs Re: [scribes]: Book: Speltz "Styles of Ornament" Re: [scribes]: Book question [scribes]: More on gesso experiments [scribes]: interesting links [scribes]: Over and underbind ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:50:27 EST From: Donanell@aol.com Subject: Re: [scribes]: gouache and eggs Are you saying not to use oxgall liquid either? I can't imagine anything that would be worse for paint than that, but some folks swear by it. Just a thought to this.... I had an instructor teach in a graphic design class that oxgall is an agent used to make paint 'flow' easier on a nib or in a tech pen. It was to be used as three drops to a cup of distilled water, and that water was used to thin the guache. I hace never heard of it used in actual painting. I don't know if this helps, or how accurate it is in this instance. Iduna West ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:26:19 -0600 (EST) From: ches@io.com Subject: [scribes]: Book question I recently ran across an illumination from the book Styles of Ornament by Alexander Spletz. The illumination is labled as "German Renaissance ornament decoration inscription page". I can put the scan up on the web for any to see if you like. My question is, how reliable is this book in it's identification of the items in it? Does anyone have this book? Sincerely, Chiara Francesca ches@io.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 10:45:31 -0600 From: "Charlotte DuBose" Subject: RE: [scribes]: gouache and eggs I have used ox gall liquid for quite a while now. I was frustrated that my reds were streaky, no matter what I did. So, I add a little bit (a drop) of it to my paint on my palette, then add a drop of water. The result is a very nice, consistent color with little or no streaking. I would be more than happy to scan a sample in and send it to anyone who desires to see my results. ( I dont' use it in all of my colors, all the time....just on certain things w/certain colors) Ldy Miriel Meridies - -----Original Message----- From: owner-scribes@castle.org [mailto:owner-scribes@castle.org]On Behalf Of Donanell@aol.com Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 9:50 AM To: scribes@castle.org Subject: Re: [scribes]: gouache and eggs Are you saying not to use oxgall liquid either? I can't imagine anything that would be worse for paint than that, but some folks swear by it. Just a thought to this.... I had an instructor teach in a graphic design class that oxgall is an agent used to make paint 'flow' easier on a nib or in a tech pen. It was to be used as three drops to a cup of distilled water, and that water was used to thin the guache. I hace never heard of it used in actual painting. I don't know if this helps, or how accurate it is in this instance. Iduna West ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 12:05:50 -0500 (EST) From: john j cash Subject: Re: [scribes]: Book: Speltz "Styles of Ornament" Dear folks, It is difficult to describe a book without having it in front of you; but I hope some words on its publication history may give you an idea of how to use it as a source. Speltz published a number of illustrated books on architectural design and ornament in the early 1900s, of which "Styles of Ornament" was one. It was originally a three-volume set delaing with Classical, Medieval and Modern design elements. It was published in German and in English, and was reprinted several times during the last 100 years -- recently as a 60-page set of unattributed plates with minimal historical background. Speltz meant his book as an encyclopedia of design elements, for architects, designers, technical artists, rather than for art historians (although his three-volume originals seem to have included decent art-historical analysis for his era). So what does this mean? First, be sure you have the right edition, since several lesser ones are out there. Second, remember that he wrote in 1910 or so, and that his idea of "a good source" is not necessarily ours. Third, keep in mind he wrote for designers rather than fine artists, and so a reproduced Renaissance border was meant to provide -inspiration- for a draftsman designing a chest or doorframe in the Renaissance style, but not to provide -documentation- for a calligrapher trying to reproduce a Renaissance-era manuscript page. - -- johannes v.n. "When you write, write only on plastic, the garbage dumps are growing, the libraries are being destroyed." Dragoslav Dedovic' ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 09:09:23 -0800 From: Carolyn_Richardson@cch.com Subject: Re: [scribes]: Book question >>I recently ran across an illumination from the book Styles of Ornament by Alexander Spletz. The illumination is labled as "German Renaissance ornament decoration inscription page". I can put the scan up on the web for any to see if you like.<< IIRC, Spletz's book is actually a Victorian reproduction. About as reliable as most of those victorian books (i.e. probably not very reliable). TEtchubah of Greenlake, Caid ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 2 Mar 2000 09:19:21 -0800 From: Carolyn_Richardson@cch.com Subject: [scribes]: More on gesso experiments I got around to actually gilding my gesso samples for class. Didn't have much success with most of them. The think that surprised me the most was the the recipes I made up that substituted the slaked plaster with French whiting, and lead with titanium, worked the best. I think all of the versions could use more sugar to help the gold stick. Despite breathing on them thru a straw, *none* of them actually got rehydrated enough to have the gold stick (I wet them with a brush instead). The original recipe from "The Illuminated Alphabet" (with lead and slaked plaster) flaked off the paper the minute I tried burnishing it. That was true for both the original and the titanium versions, but with the addition of rotten glair it didn't flake and the gold stuck semi-well. I've been racking my brains trying to think *which* of the ingredients gives the gesso more flexibility - is it the lead/titanium? Someone please remind me. BTW, anyone here in Caid who's planning on taking this class - I found out from JimBear & Hyddyr last night that the gilding class scheduled for Sunday morning is *not* mine. Jim apparently didn't get the class proposal into Hyddyr on time, so we're going to do this as part of the unscheduled Scribal Arts track from 10-Noon on Saturday. I have asked Hyddyr to go ahead and schedule it as a class for next session in October. Tetchubah of Greenlake, Caid ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 12:05:09 PST From: "erik welch" Subject: [scribes]: interesting links Today was a slow one at work, so I have gone on a mission to find interesting links. Here are a few that I thought people might be interested in... Bibliotheca Schoenbergensis: An Exhibition from the Collection of Lawrence J. Schoenberg (ranges all over period and has some interesting arabic stuff as well...) http://www.library.upenn.edu/special/gallery/schoenberg/schoenberg.html Celtic Net http://www.ceolas.org/IrishNet/ Angus Og's Hotlinks to the celts (supposedly everything celtic on the web...) http://og-man.net Erik Lundgren of Bearhaven ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 02 Mar 2000 15:51:29 +0000 From: Randy Asplund Subject: [scribes]: Over and underbind Hi everybody, First I would like to compliment Lord Giles on his knowlege about pigments and binders. Very impressive! I agree with what he has been saying and would like to add a few things. 1) When paint is applied to a paper which is very absorbant (like watercolor), this actually pulls the moisture from the paint down into the paper and can deposit the color on the surface with less binder solution on it than it really should have. One can add a little more binder to the paint to correct this, or other techniques involve laying down a little bit of extra size solution on the page first. Moist glue sheets can be rubbed, etc, but you shouldn't need to do either of these things. The best fix is to not use paper which is that absorbant in the first place! 2) There are medieval techniques aimed at producing very translucent and glossy paint films which have a perceivable thickness. This is done by using a heavy binder application stained with some color. Of course if you do just that, your paint will crack , so you need to add a bit of sugar to make it flexible. This sugar was added in the form of minute amounts of honey. Some medieval colors, such as saffron, were just used by staining the binder anyway, even for normal thickness of application. This is essentially like painting with pure binder, so unless other bulk materials are added one should consider using a little sweetener in such mixtures. If you think you could paint a thin layer of color with a lot of water to make a "translucent" application like a modern watercolorist, you could, but that would make it very weak from underbinding! Such an application would be prone to abrasion in a scroll case and wouldn't survive in a book. Heavy addition of water is a bad technique for authentic medieval illumination. It also cockles the page and lifts colors it is painted over. If you have doubts about how much is the right amount, it is easy to test. You have room to err, so don't think it is too hard before you try. All you need to do is paint a sample on the type of page that you are working on, then let it dry completely. Rub it with a tissue and see if color comes off like powder. If it does, you need more binder. Next try bending the page through that area. If it cracks, then you need to make it flexible with a minute touch of ground sugar. Good luck, RanthulfR Mark Calderwood wrote: > > >I've read in several sources that it was a period technique to mix binders. > >Adding gum arabic or glair to egg yolk makes a more durable paint. Is there > >something in modern tube gouaches that would change what worked in period? > This works fine with raw ground pigment, which needs to be mixed with a > binder such as egg yolk (to make tempera) or gum arabic or egg white.The > last two are described in the Gottingen Model book, the first survives in > innumerable panel paintings and icons. I don't know precisely why tempera > wasn't used in books rather than gum-bound colours, the only working theory > I have at the moment is that while tempera is extremely durable, it's not > very flexible, and so being used on the pages of a book would cause it to > degrade very quickly. There may also be a chemical reason, I'm getting a > friend who's an industrial chemist to look at this. > > Modern paints differ greatly from raw pigments, in that they have all sorts > of chemical goodies added to them:a synthetic binding agent, drying agents, > stabilisers, base, all added to the basic metal salt pigment.They're > designed to be used with the addittion of water alone, once you start > adding stuff like egg yolk the chemical composition gets upset and therin > lies the road to ruin. I have conducted a lot of experiments with this sort > of thing over the years, and have learned the hard way to leave well enough > alone!I once used watercolours and gouache bound with egg yolk on a test > piece: within six weeks it had degraded to a greyish-brown mess that had > stained the paper (the gouache held up slightly better, but it tended to > flake off when I touched it). Save yourself the pain! > > > >Many gouaches are underbound and require more binder to be added. This is > due > >in part to the companies using the same amount of binder in all paints. The > >proper pigment to binder ratio should change, depending on the pigment. > Which is why you should always buy the best quality paints you can > afford.The better quality they are, the less crud they've got in them, and > the longer they last.Personally, I have used Winsor & Newton gouaches for > years with no problems.I did have a bit of a skirmish with what I thought > was an underbound green, and it turned out I was using the wrong technique > (I was flooding it on rather than using period technique-once I stopped > doing that it was fine). I also mix in a bit of cadmium yellow these days > just to be safe (cadmium is a plasticiser,so it should add to the paint's > workability). > > Hope this helps > Giles de Laval > Lochac - -- Randy Asplund (734) 663-0954 Science Fiction and Fantasy Illustration 2101 S. Circle Dr., Ann Arbor, MI. 48103 See a Universe of art ranging from Medieval Manuscripts to Star Trek and Magic: The Gathering at: http://www.provide.net/~randyaf ------------------------------ End of scribes digest V2 #1439 ******************************