"...useful guidance for present-day application."
When I started working with tea and ink on paper, to the exclusion of oils, it wasn't a full shift. There was always the idea of a return to oil, taking whatever I found in the meantime back with me. The question was never really when, but how. I knew I wouldn't just pick up and start where I left off, because I know more now than I did then. What I know now is that picking up a tub of gesso and jars with no list of ingredients feels like I'm baking cookies out of a tube. Or running the final leg of a relay race. It felt...not-quite-right, and so it's high time to get my lab on and usher the mad science of the Old Masters into my own work. So there's been extensive research and I'm lucky to have access to the materials. On W. 29th Street, for example, there's a store called Kremer Pigments, which I discovered by way of a helpful comment on the Natural Pigments forums. You sense a theme, I'm sure. As soon as I found out there was a place in town to buy the ingredients I needed to make my own stuff, I knew what my Saturday looked like. It looked like a bright freezing day with a few train changes and a bit of a walk, and then it looked like this:
It is the best place ever. Anyway, it turned out that Cooper Union is dutifully guiding a class through chalk ground preparation and so a) I had to build a little hoard on one of the tables as students peppered in looking for the same ingredients I needed and b) when I bought the ingredients finally, store lady gave me a 10% discount based on her assumption that I was in a class too. Let's here it for "right place, right time", ladies and gentleman. Here's my stash in progress, minus the brushes and the mortars. Not that I didn't covet the mortars. Let me tell you....
The purchase, complete, constituted the following:
For the preparation of size and grounds for wood panels
terra alba (calcium sulphate, or raw gypsum), 1 kg
marble dust, very white, fine particle (calcium carbonate), 1 kg
kaolinite (china, or pipe clay), 1 kg
rabbit skin glue, large granule, or cubes (looks like granola in a bag. Do not eat), 1 kg
Natural resins for the preparation of isolating varnishes and mediums
Gum copal, from Madagascar, 100g
Dammar, hand-picked, Sumatra, best quality, 100g
Shellac, bleached very light, unwaxed, 100g
For use as a solvent and preservative in oil mediums or emulsion temperas
spike-lavender oil, 75 mL
For use in oil mediums, emulsion temperas, or as pigment binder
linseed oil, cold-pressed (raw), 75 mL
For the preparation of iron-gall (waterproof) inks
gallnuts ("oak apples"), 100g
4 Wide-mouth air-tight screw top glass jars, 250 mL each
Daniel V. Thompson, The Practice of Tempera Painting (Tempera painting requires its own discipline, and provides an excellent underpainting for oil glazes. See also, Northern Renaissance painting).
It is the best place ever. Anyway, it turned out that Cooper Union is dutifully guiding a class through chalk ground preparation and so a) I had to build a little hoard on one of the tables as students peppered in looking for the same ingredients I needed and b) when I bought the ingredients finally, store lady gave me a 10% discount based on her assumption that I was in a class too. Let's here it for "right place, right time", ladies and gentleman. Here's my stash in progress, minus the brushes and the mortars. Not that I didn't covet the mortars. Let me tell you....
The purchase, complete, constituted the following:
For the preparation of size and grounds for wood panels
terra alba (calcium sulphate, or raw gypsum), 1 kg
marble dust, very white, fine particle (calcium carbonate), 1 kg
kaolinite (china, or pipe clay), 1 kg
rabbit skin glue, large granule, or cubes (looks like granola in a bag. Do not eat), 1 kg
Natural resins for the preparation of isolating varnishes and mediums
Gum copal, from Madagascar, 100g
Dammar, hand-picked, Sumatra, best quality, 100g
Shellac, bleached very light, unwaxed, 100g
For use as a solvent and preservative in oil mediums or emulsion temperas
spike-lavender oil, 75 mL
For use in oil mediums, emulsion temperas, or as pigment binder
linseed oil, cold-pressed (raw), 75 mL
For the preparation of iron-gall (waterproof) inks
gallnuts ("oak apples"), 100g
4 Wide-mouth air-tight screw top glass jars, 250 mL each
Daniel V. Thompson, The Practice of Tempera Painting (Tempera painting requires its own discipline, and provides an excellent underpainting for oil glazes. See also, Northern Renaissance painting).