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Painting in the 1400-1600's was a labor-intensive
undertaking, made complicated by securing the correct pigments (stones,
minerals, plants) grinding them yourself, to a perfect grain size for that
specific pigment. Because each pigment required different amount of oil
in order to turn it into paint, some pigments had to be ground
extremely fine, other not so much.
It was necessary to obtain linen to paint on, lead white and marble dust to make gesso, pencils, chalk, charcoal (this you also made), and then sources for linseed oil, varnish (which you diluted yourself and put into a container), and turpentine.
You would need some spatula knives to combine the pigments
with oil and put them into pig skin bladders (left). You would use a glass
pestle to grind the pigments, adding the oil drop by drop. Because
linseed oil was the fastest drying and combined permanently with the
paint, it was preferred over walnut oil and other oils.
Vermeer's origninal painting titled "The Milkmaid"
(right) is about 15 inches wide and 18 inches high. It is in the
Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Stretching canvas and applying gesso, letting it air dry.
Use of fine brushes versus wide, wide for gesso application
Vermeer used linen canvas; we use cotton canvas today mainly because it is more affordable. Linen canvas is still widely used and easily obtained. Linen canvas is woven linen thread obtained from the flax plant grown and harvested in the mid to late summer. The seeds are used to make linseed oil and the inside fibers are used to make linen thread.
The linen thread is obtained by soaking the dry stalks in a wet trough for a number of days, weeks, until the outer coating has softened. The outer rough coating protects the soft inner fibers. The wet flax is then pulled across a series of large to very small wooden block covered in iron spikes to strip the outer bark off. The use of smaller spikes remove gradually lets the access to the linen preserve it unharmed, removing the tough outer “eat” the canvas and so a protective agent is used to form a barrier between them.
Rabbit skin glue provides the perfect barrier, to protect the linen from damage, and prevent the oil paint from soaking into the linen fabric. The glue literally seals the fabric much like we use an acrylic coating on cars to protect the paint. Rabbit skin glue is from what it sounds like, rabbit skin, the underside, not the fur. It is dissolved in hot water and applied to the canvas in a number of successive layers until the canvas is completely sealed. You can hold the canvas up to the light and if you see any pinholes, more sealing is needed. The areas most susceptible to “eating” are the corners and edges.
We will use an adapted the modern method, the old method used pure lead paint. New gesso serves the same function of lead white except that the poisonous effect is avoided.
Brushes. We are used to seeing a number of types and sizes of brushes available, for painting the house, interior walls, brushes for acrylic, varnish, enamel. Vermeer used a variety of brushes for his work. A wide brush was used for the application of gesso and narrow, thin brushes were used on the painting. You could compare these to the artist's brushes we use today, except that they were handmade. Vermeer's brushes used a carved wood handle, feather quills as the ferrule (the part that holds the bristles or hairs in place). Ferrules are made now with thin strips of metal and rings are tapped into the edges to create a firmer bond. Brushes could be made with various types of hair, horse, badger and others.
Video of Making
a brush with horsehair and
wood.
Our computers use mixed light, printing uses mixed inks, paints use chemistry.
Modern paints are chemically stable and compatible; older paints were pure pigments of stone, mineral, dyes, or plant based and were often chemically incompatible, meaning the results might appear one color and over time chemically change into something else.
For the first week, we will complete the drawing in as much detail as you can, it should resemble a black and white photograph with the only thing missing is the color.
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The photograph we will be working from is a composition arranged of some Medaille students into a typical Vermeer-like setting, with a tiled floor and light streaming in from the left-hand side. We have cut up the composition in order to have you complete the drawing for next week.
These are the steps to arrive at our completed canvas:
In order to complete these steps we need to make more materials. Vermeer had an account at the apothecary shop and could purchase everything he needed, pigments (lapus lazuli and gold), oils, and perhaps even turpentine and brushes.
Turpentine is obtained by steam distillation of the gummy resin from pine trees. How to extract oil from eucalyptus leaves (different substance but same process)
Place a large stew pot on the largest burner of your
stove. Fill the bottom 2 or 3 inches of the pot with distilled water.
Distilled water contains no minerals that may contaminate your oil.
Place a round cooling rack in the bottom of the stew pot, making sure
it sits at least 1/2 inch above the level of the water. It is important
that
your leaves do not touch the water; you want to steam them,
Fold a length of cheesecloth in half and spread it over your cooling
rack. Place a jar in the center of the rack on top of the cheesecloth.
Bruise up to 2 cups of eucalyptus leaves and spread them over the
cheesecloth on the cooling rack. Don't get any in the water or in the
jar.
Set a bowl on top of the stew pot like a lid. Fill the bowl with ice.
Turn the heat to high and bring the water to a boil. Once boiling, turn
the heat to medium high, keeping the water at a simmer. Allow the water
to simmer for about an hour.
Check on the leaves. The steam from the water should vaporize the oils
from the leaves. They will condense on the underside of the bowl and
run down into the jar.
the process of making turpentine
and rosin.
linseed oil is obtained by pressing the linseeds under extreme pressure to release the oil. The Romans used a wedge press to obtain olive oil
stand oil is sunthickened linseed oil. It was used like linseed oil to slow down the drying process of some pigments, the idea was to get the painting to dry at the same rate, some pigments would dry fast, others very slow. Stand oil was a sort of equalizer, slowing down the fast-drying pigments. Linseed oil could be placed in a glass container covered and allowed to warm in the sun to naturally thicken. Best done in the summer or gently over a stove.
adding oil drop by drop to dry pigment and letting the paint come to a consistency of creamy butter, easy to spread. Each pigment requires its own volume of oil to arrive at this consistency, some will take a lot of oil, others very little.
Now on to our painting.
a viewfinder is a rectangular or square shape (to match the shape of your canvas) cut out of paper. It is held up to find the selection of the arrangement that you would like to draw on the canvas.
Vermeer had to consider what objects were nearer to himself (called the foreground), what objects appeared to be in the middle of the scene (called the middle ground) and what made up the furthest back of the painting (the background). In drawing these on the canvas he used a range of pencil strokes ranging from dark to medium to light to indicate how near or far the objects were from his viewpoint. This can be accomplished by simply applying more color (pencil) to the closest objects, and less to the objects in the distance.
Of course we know about cave paintings. But Vermeer's
type of painting developed from illuminated manuscripts (literally
books with painted pictures, left) of the Middle Ages which were painted with
pigments mixed with egg yolk to make tempera paint.
If you remember using tempera paint in grade school its one disadvantage was that if you used it too thickly it would chip off. Manuscript painters ran into the same problems, and were searching for a method to prevent this. Oil was added to the paint instead of egg and viola, the paint didn't chip off, but it would eat the paper, so that meant that it couldn't be used in books.
But putting oil in the pigment (and discovering that it would be very permanent) made it suitable for other types of paintings, on gesso covered panels for churches, for commissions.
And then painting on woven canvas. Of course this change process took a long time. But by Vermeer's time, oil painting especially in the Netherlands was very popular. Artists usually employed apprentices who helped in the studio, mixing paint, etc. Some studios trained artists and used apprentices to complete the majority of paintings and then the master would paint the face and hands. Vermeer painted his entire paintings and made his own paint.
The best web about Vermeer is Essential Vermeer.
Neil Collins's Visual Arts Cork is a terrific comprehensive resource.
Was Oil Paint Expensive to Make?
When Was Oil Painting First Invented?
Colour pigments used in oil painting did not change much during this period. The color palette of the Renaissance remained the basic model well into the 17th century.
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Cinnabar or cinnabarite (red mercury(II) sulfide (HgS),
native vermilion), is the common ore of mercury. Cinnabar is found in all localities that yield mercury; it has been mined since the Neolithic Age. |
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Carmine also called Crimson Lake, Cochineal,
is a pigment of a bright-red
color obtained from the aluminum salt of carminic
acid, which is produced by some scale insects,
such as the cochineal scale and the Polish cochineal, and is used as a general term for
a particularly deep-red color. To prepare carmine, the powdered scale insect bodies are boiled in ammonia or a sodium carbonate solution, the insoluble matter is removed by filtering, and alum is added to the clear salt solution of carminic acid to precipitate the red aluminium salt, called "carmine lake" or "crimson lake." Purity of color is ensured by the absence of iron
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Dragon's blood is a bright red resin
that is obtained from different species of a number of distinct plant
genera: Croton, Dracaena,
Daemonorops, Calamus
rotang and Pterocarpus. The red resin was used in ancient times as varnish, medicine, incense, and dye. It continues to be employed for the aforementioned purposes by some.
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Venetian red is a light and warm (somewhat
unsaturated) pigment that is a darker shade of scarlet,
derived from nearly pure ferric oxide (Fe2O3) of the hematite type. Modern versions are frequently made
with synthetic red iron oxide. It also occurs naturally as the mineral magnetite. As the mineral known as hematite, Fe2O3 is the main source of the iron for the steel industry. |
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Madder. A southwest Asian perennial plant (Rubia tinctorum)
having small yellow flowers, whorled leaves, and a red root, an important source
of the dye alizarin. It has been used since ancient times as a vegetable red dye for leather, wool, cotton and silk. In India, it was used by hermits to dye their clothes saffron. The pulverised roots can be dissolved in sulfuric acid, which leaves a dye called garance (the French name for madder) after drying. Another method of increasing the yield consisted of dissolving the roots in sulfuric acid after they had been used for dyeing.
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Azurite is a soft, deep blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. It is also known as Chessylite after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France. |
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Indigo is a color
named after the blue dye derived from the
plant Indigofera tinctoria and related
species. The first recorded use of indigo as a color
name in English was in 1289.
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Egyptian blue is chemically known as calcium copper silicate. It is a pigment used by Egyptians for thousands of years. It is considered to be the first synthetic pigment. The pigment was known to the Romans by the name caeruleum. Vitruvius describes in his work '"De architectura" how it was produced by grinding sand, copper and natron and heating the mixture, shaped into small balls, in a furnace. Lime is necessary for the production as well, but probably lime-rich sand was used. |
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Verdigris is the common name for a green pigment. It was originally made by hanging copper plates over hot vinegar in a sealed pot until a green crust formed on the copper. Another method of obtaining verdigris pigment, used in the Middle Ages, was to attach copper strips to a wooden block with acetic acid, then bury the sealed block in dung. A few weeks later the pot was dug up and the verdigris scraped off. |
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Renaissance blues included Ultramarine, occurring in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli, a rock. |
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Malachite is a copper carbonate mineral, with the formula Cu2CO3(OH)2. This green-colored mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses. Individual crystals are rare but do occur as slender to acicular prisms. Pseudomorphs after more tabular or blocky azurite crystals also occur. |
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Green Earth. (Caledonite, Glauconite, Terra Verde of Verona, Ciprus Green) The name is applied to several different minerals, but most importantly in medieval painting is the light, cold green of celadonite, found chiefly in small copper-lead deposits in rock in the area of Verona, Italy. Today the color is chiefly a durable mixture of chromium oxide, black, white and ochre, since the natural product is scarcely obtainable. |
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Gamboge is a partially transparent dark mustard yellow pigment. It is most often extracted by tapping resin from evergreen trees of the family Guttiferae. The trees must be ten years old before they are tapped. The resin is extracted by making spiral incisions in the bark, and by breaking off leaves and shoots and letting the milky yellow resinous gum drip out. The resulting latex is collected in hollow bamboo canes. After the resin is congealed, the bamboo is broken away and large rods of raw gamboge remain. |
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Naples yellow, also called antimony yellow or Giallorino,
can range from a somewhat muted, or earthy, reddish yellow pigment to a
bright light yellow, and is the chemical compound lead(II) antimonate.
It is one of the oldest synthetic pigments, dating from around 1620.
The related mineral pigment, bindheimite, dates from the 16th century
BC. However, this natural version was rarely, if ever, used as a
pigment. |
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Orpiment is an orange to yellow mineral that is found worldwide, and occurs as a sublimation product in volcanic fumaroles, low temperature hydrothermal veins, and hot springs. Orpiment was used as a medicine in China although it is highly toxic. It was also used as a fly poison and on the tips of poison arrows. Because of its striking color, it was also a favourite with alchemists searching for a way to make gold, both in China and the West. It used for centuries as a pigment in painting and for sealing wax, being one of the few clear, bright yellow pigments available to artists up until the 19th century. |
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Umber is a natural brown clay pigment which contains iron and manganese oxides. The color becomes more intense when calcined (heated), and the resulting pigment is called burnt umber. Its name derives from the Latin word umbra (shadow) and was originally extracted in Umbria, a mountainous region of central Italy,[1] but it is found in many parts of the world. Some of the finest umber comes from Cyprus. It has been used as a pigment since prehistoric times. |
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Burnt sienna is an iron oxide pigment formed by burning raw sienna (Terra di Siena Naturale) to remove the water from the clay and give it a warm reddish-brown colour. Sienna is a form of limonite clay; its yellow-brown colour comes from ferric oxides. As a natural pigment, it (along with its chemical cousins ochre and umber) was one of the first pigments to be used by humans, and is found in many cave paintings. |
White lead is the chemical compound produced by the Dutch process. This involved casting metallic lead as thin buckles. These were corroded with acetic acid in the presence of carbon dioxide. This was done by placing them over pots with a little vinegar (containing acetic acid). These were stacked up and covered with a mixture of decaying dung and spent tanner's bark, which supplied the CO2 and left for six to fourteen weeks, by which time the blue-grey lead had corroded to white lead. The pots were then taken to a separating table where scraping and pounding removed the white lead from the buckles. The powder was then dried and packed for shipment. One happy finding was that it was not necessary to dry the paste of white lead in water. All that needed was to mill the paste with linseed oil, when the white lead would take up the oil and reject the water,to give white lead in oil. |
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Chalk is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite or calcium carbonate. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates (coccoliths) shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores. It is common to find chert or flint nodules embedded in chalk. Chalk can also refer to other compounds including magnesium silicate and calcium sulfate. |  |
Gypsum is a very soft sulfate
mineral composed of calcium sulfate dihydrate, with the chemical
formula CaSO4·2H2O.[3] It is found in alabaster, a decorative stone used in Ancient Egypt. It is the second softest mineral on
the Mohs Hardness Scale.
It forms as an evaporite mineral and as a
hydration product of anhydrite. In the medieval period it was mixed, by scribes and illuminators, with lead carbonate (powdered white lead) to make gesso which was applied to illuminated letters and gilded with gold in illuminated manuscripts. |
| Carbon black is the name of a common black pigment, traditionally produced from charring organic materials such as wood or bone. It is known by a variety of names, each of which reflects a traditional method for producing carbon black: |
▪ Ivory black was traditionally
produced by charring ivory or bones.
▪ Vine black was traditionally produced by charring desiccated grape vines and stems. ▪ Lamp black was traditionally produced by collecting soot, also known as lampblack, from oil lamps |
Marion Boddy-Evans' Palettes and Techniques of the Old Masters: Rembrandt
yellow ocher, burnt sienna, burnt umber white, black vermillion, blue by mixing charcoal into white paint
Vermeer's palette
azurite, carmine, charcoal black, green earth, indigo, ivory black, lead white, lead-tin yellow, madder lake, red ocher, smalt, ultramarine, umber, verdigris, vermillion, yellow ocher
Of all the colors available today as Vermeer had them, only a few remain:
The rest of the colors we use today are synthetically made and resistant to the chemical results that Vermeer experienced. Today we have synthetic versions of:
The others have disappeared because they were poisonous (lead white, lead-tin yellow, verdigris) or became cost prohibitive (smalt, azurite, green earth) or colors were invented to take their place (carmine, madder lake, verdigris and vermillion).
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It is extrremely unlikely that Vermeer had on his palette in any
given work session all the pigments that were available to him.
Painters were known to use specific palettes set out each day according
the passage to be painted. The wooden palette to the left represents
the seven principle pigments which Vermeer commonly employed: |
Paint applied in a painting is subject to a number of environmental effects that can affect its color and the length of time it remain the same color in the painting. Paints are affected by sunlight (ultraviolet rays) and chemical reactions.
fugitive - the color appears to disappear
stable - the color remains relatively consistent throughout the life of the painting
lightfast - the color is not affected by sunlight which would tend to bleach colors to a lighter version.
fading - the color seems to become lighter over time.
permanent - the color seems to maintain its consistency throughout time.
True natural paints, pure earth and ground stone and some vegetable colors are resistant to fading, and more importantly, do not chemically react with other paint colors. Most of the problems of painting and color changes (to black) or fading or in some cases disappearing are caused by chemical reactions of the chemicals in that paint combining with other paints to create a chemical reaction. Sometimes the paint only need be next to another color to cause the reaction. Most chemical reactions tend to involve lead white paint. Since lead white is not so commonly used, these types of chemical reactions are easier to predict. The historic pigments section below lists some of the pigments that fall into these chemical reactions and ultraviolet light conditions.
Historic pigments Obsolete colors
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