WHERE DID ARTISTS GET THEIR COLORS AND PAINT? ALMOST ALL ARTISTS’ SUPPLIES WERE MADE AND SOLD BY...

WHERE DID ARTISTS GET THEIR COLORS AND PAINT?

• ALMOST ALL ARTISTS’ SUPPLIES WERE MADE AND SOLD BY PROFESSIONALS CALLED ____________ since the mid-seventeenth century

Colormen put the paint in ______

• Artists would pierce the skin with a tack and then mend the puncture. It was messy and wasteful because the paint would dry out quickly.

Some colormen made inferior paints.

• __________complained about his colorman

• The painting “White Roses” actually contains traces of what was probably madder red. The white roses were most likely originally pink.

Some artists preferred to make their own paints.

• Patrons often worried that _________would never start on their painting because he took so long distilling and mixing paints.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkF9uYcA_Ms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2UbD4ol44k

IN 1841 AN AMERICAN PORTRAIT PAINTER CALLED ________INVENTED

THE FIRST COLLAPSIBLE TUBE.

Charcoal

• Charcoal- one of the first things used to draw with.

• Comes from the ____.

Unfortunately, after the invention of plastic, willow baskets became

obsolete.

• One day, _______was looking at the ashes in the fireplace and found a piece of burned willow. For some reason this piece of willow did not turn into ash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0HW4qk8dv4

https://vimeo.com/67487897

OCHRE

• OCHRE (iron oxide) was the first color paint. It has been used on every inhabited continent since painting began.

• The word Ochre comes from the greek word meaning “pale yellow”

• Ochre can be red or brown as well. Something earthy.

• Ochre in nature

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO1e8SkPhNo

https://vimeo.com/2188162

BLACK• Black ink comes from

different sources. One medieval ink was made from oak galls.

• A wasp punctures the tree to lay her eggs. The tree then forms a nutlike growth around the wasp holes. The galls are collected before the wasp eggs hatch, thus forming the base for the intense black.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzXccvoJThI

The most extraordinary brown was called mommia or mummy. It was made from Egyptian mummies

and used until 1925. The colormen ran out of mummies.

After the 18th century, brown ink was often made from sepia, the dark liquor secreted by cuttlefish

when they are afraid

Bone Black was sometimes made from human corpses. However, it

was really a brown color.

http://vimeo.com/24030911

• Colorman George Field recorded that he received a delivery of “mummy”. It smelled like garlic and Ammonia, grinded easily, and was pasty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCdZsYYgEOM

white

• White paint can be made from many things:

• Chalk• Zinc• Barium• Rice• Fossilized sea

creatures

The greatest white paint is made of lead

It would poison

artists and factory workers

Women using it for make-up

children who thought it tasted sweet

How do you make lead white paint?

1. put shavings of thin lead over a bowl filled with vinegar.

2. the acid on the thin metal will cause a chemical reaction and leave a white deposit of lead carbonate.

3. powder and flatten the lead into little cakes.

4. leave out to dry in the sun.

The Dutch process of making lead white:

• Use clay pots divided into two sections. One for lead, one for vinegar.

• Heap manure around the pots to produce heat to evaporate the acid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsssPTsyXYs

http://vimeo.com/38631354

Since 1994, lead white paint has

been banned

from being sold except

under special

conditions.

Lead white use to be used for makeup

• The damaged caused by the lead makeup would sometimes make the victim feel more attractive.

Symptoms of lead poisoning from makeup:

• 1st, a feeling of lethargy

• Pallid hollow to the cheeks (women were thought to be prettier with a dead-pale face)

• Wobbly legs

• Little blue marks on skin. • Constipation• Vomiting• Kidney collapse• Behavior abnormalities

The antidote is

to drink milk.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9geYl526KY http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=ok8XJp_6AvM

Back to lead paint…..

• Although lead paint is “brilliant” some thought it should be avoided.

• If suspended in water based media, it isn’t stable and can turn black over time.

Today, lead paint is only allowed on the outside of grades I and II star

listed houses.

The White House was covered with lime so that it would be white like the ancient Greek

buildings.

However, unknown to the designers of the White House, Greek temples had actually been covered with incredibly bright colors

when they were built. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jmNcS1P6vA

red

• One of the most popular reds was and is made from blood.

Cochineal Beetles

• The blood from the cochineal beetle has been treasured since the Incas and the Aztecs.

• The beetle lives on the prickly pear cactus in South America.

• If allowed, the beetle will kill the cactus. The farmers must harvest the beetles within 2 weeks of growth.

Cochineal red(also called carmine) is used in makeup,

paint, textiles, and in fruit juice. It is labeled as E120

• E120 is used in Cherry coke

Kermes (Crimson) is an Indo-European cousin of the cochineal.

• The Romans liked this color so much, they sometimes demanded that taxes should be paid in sacks of kermes.

During the Middle Ages, Kermes was one of the most expensive dyes in

Europe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyPqfTulrHE

Orange

• An orange flower known as Safflower is used to make orange, yellow, and pink.

Safflower has been cultivated for 5,000 years. It is hard to pick

because of its’ spines.

Madder-a small bush with a pink root. Gives a rich orange-red.

Madder was often grown in Holland. The Dutch word for

crop is krap.• To dye somethin, you

would use alum, tin, calcium, tannin, ox blood, and sheep or cow dung.

• Krap smells like crap.

Orange can also be found in Amber, a fossilized tree resin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtrN5KWd_Dg

Yellow• Holy cow! The original Indian Yellow

was made from the soiled earth of mango leaf-fed cattle in the Monghyr region of India. The earth was dried, powdered, purified, and then pressed into lumps. Because of the poor health of the mango-fed cattle, the Indian government banned production of the pigment in the early 20th century.

Gamboge is a yellow made from the resin of trees in the Cambodian forests. A beautiful transparent yellow it may be, but the color makers

had to avoid touching their mouths or the rest of the day could be spent in the restroom.

Buckthorn can also make you go to the bathroom.

Saffron yellow• One of the most

expensive and most colorful spices in the world.

• Saffron comes from the crocus flower.

Crocus flowers have to be picked by noon because the

bloom closes.

Medieval artists used saffron as a cheap alternative to gold

leaf in their manuscripts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjpd9D4Kc4Q

Green• Carl Wilhelm Scheele was a chemist who

experimented with arsenic in 1775. While experimenting, he produced an astonishing green. The green was named Scheele’s green.

Scheele confided in a friend, who was also a scientist, that he was worried

about his green. Should tell people that the green came from arsine?

Scheele was a victim of his own chemical experiments, dying at 44 in 1786, long before Scheele's green was found to be poisonous

Soon, Manufacturers were using this green in a range of paints and papers and people happily

pasted poison on their walls.

• It was not very uncommon for children who slept in a bedroom papered with Scheele’s green to die of arsenical poisoning. The true nature of the malady wasn’t discovered until it was too late."

Why were so many people showing signs of arsenic poisoning?

• In 1889, a bio chemist finally solved the mystery.

He discovered that if wallpaper containing Scheele's Green became damp, and then became moldy , the mold would convert the arsenic into a vapor form of arsenic. This vapor was very poisonous indeed. Breathe in enough of the vapor, and you would go down with a nasty case of arsenic poisoning.

Was Napoleon’s death actually caused by his wallpaper?

• It was thought that he died of stomach cancer

However……

• In 1980 a piece of the wallpaper from Napoleon’s home was tested for arsenic. It was found.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVURwNA_gdM

http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/a-tour-of-the-museum-of-bad-art/

PURPLE• “Tyrian Purple,” the purple dye used as early as the 1600’s,

was produced from the mucus of murex. It took some 12,000 shellfish to extract .05 oz of the pure dye. The fish had to soak in stale urine. The process of making the purple smelled so bad that it had to be done outside city walls. This disgustingness then stuck with the color

• Rome, Egypt, and Persia all used purple for royalty to wear. Purple dyes were rare and expensive; only the rich had access to them. Most purple colorants came from the dye extraction from fish or insects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72b9oQZ-pdk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLfjn37zp0Q

BLUE

• Blue can be made from rocks and plants

Mayan Blue

• The ancient Mayans would paint the unlucky human sacrifices blue in hopes that the rain god would make it rain.

Haint blue for porch ceilings

• Back in the day, folks could be pretty superstitious. Many believed if you painted the front ceiling of your porch haint blue, it would look like water and keep the haints, (restless ghosts and bad spirits) from entering into your home, because as everybody knows, haints can’t cross water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA8Bjzj-aLs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytCngvyPSt8