Vegetable extract Colors, Rock Pigments and Dyes

Is there a major difference between vegetable extract colors and pigments colors made from grounded rocks or dyes ?

I watched an documentary where a walking road in deep inside of north italian hills which was used dated from roman times , pilgramage road to Spain up to England. There was a church which made at 1066 and its all interior was painted by vegetable extracts found around the building. I couldnt understand where it was gold or alizarin , these colors was so intense and alive.

Did old masters ever use flora colors ?

Umut

The stability of a particular dye toward light varies from dyestuff to dyestuff. Some vegetable dyes are very stable like indigo while others are ephemeral. The famous British artist JMW Turner was too quick to embrace the new pigments made during his lifetime. Some had very poor light fastness. Many of his watercolors with the British Museum collection can only be viewed by special permission with a very dim light for a very brief period.

-) dyes are transmissive

-) mineral pigments can either be transmissive or opaque

Vegetable dyes are impermanent. If something is made from a mineral, depending on the mineral, it's permanent, or what we call permanent. Nothing in the known universe is actually permanent.

Colours made from vegetables tend to be very vibrant. The old masters used pigments made from minerals, which they ground themselves. Their colours were superior to what we can buy today, which is why their work is still around.

momus said:

Vegetable dyes are impermanent. If something is made from a mineral, depending on the mineral, it's permanent, or what we call permanent. Nothing in the known universe is actually permanent.

Colours made from vegetables tend to be very vibrant. The old masters used pigments made from minerals, which they ground themselves. Their colours were superior to what we can buy today, which is why their work is still around.

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The Anthrotype process used the fading of natural vegatable dyes by sunlight as a method of producing photographic prints. There is actually a recent book about the method, following renewed interest from alternative process enthusiasts.

To expand a bit on AgX's two categories there are also "lakes" which are soluble dyes adsorbed on an insoluble substrate and used as pigments.

momus said:

Colours made from vegetables tend to be very vibrant. The old masters used pigments made from minerals, which they ground themselves. Their colours were superior to what we can buy today, which is why their work is still around.

Click to expand...

All of the old master pigments are on the market , there is no secret on them. And they are not very expensive if your aim is to produce a masterpiece slowly in coming years like Da Vinci did. I watched another program from BBC and London Art Police said half of the world museum pieces are fake , half of them. There are very talented painters who can copy a vermeer in few weeks with original pigments. All the pupils of Rembrandt were 16 years old children where their works are very hardly indistinguishable from Rembrandt.

And there are lots of known and unknown fakers who produce a new art piece with the style of vermeer to everything and sell it to super prices.

One of them sold Dutch Rijkmeuseum a vermeer for 25 million dollars and than confessed.

I think the real thing is to stay interesting , strange faces , expressions , lots of textile , dark rooms and warm candle light is the solution for to be expensive. Talented people can be very strange and make very strange , limitless things. The trick is to find them today .

Vermeer guy said , if noone can understand my painting is original or not , I am the original artist.

Colors used around 1066, the time of William the Conqueror, tended to be ground minerals. But a natural indigo found in England, woad, was widely used since the Iron Age. Another vegetable dye, madder, is still used as a dye even today. It was brought back to Europe by the Crusaders. Various resins shipped in from the Orient were used as colorants, they have names like Dragon's Blood--red, and Gamboge--yellow. An insect found in Mexican cacti made the popular red dye "Carmine" which was used by the British to dye their uniforms red, producing the famous "redcoats". Although any use in Europe would be post-Columbus, there is a similar insect which produced a red dye and lives in European oaks, so it could have supplied a colorant during the Middle Ages. An insect from India produces a red "lac" which easily formed a "lake" with the proper mordants, and indeed is the source of the term "lake".

Beyond these well-documented uses of biological colorants there are no doubt many unique uses by private artists. Biological colors can be made more stable by oil mediums and by resins as well as egg yolks--a technique used in the Renaissance. There is a good essay on colors used in Renaissance painting at:

http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/artist-paints/renaissance-colour-palette.htm


Holbein actually used gold-leaf to generate the gold colors in some of his paintings.