Secrets Concerning Colors and Painting

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§ III.  Compositions For Limners

IX.  How to prepare colors for limning.

    Most colors are prepared, are grinded with gum-arabic.-- Ochre makes the yellow; courant mourant, the white; verdigrease, the green; ceruse, the grey; lampblack, the black; cinnabar, the red; and gold in shell, the gold.

X.  To make what is called lampblack.

    Put a large wick of cotton in a lamp, filled with nut oil, and light it.  Prop over the flame an earthen dish, and now and then visit this dist, and gather all the black which fixed itself to it.

XI.  Another way of making black.

    Burn some nut-shells in an iron pan, and throw them in another full of water.  Then grind them on marble with either oil or varnish.

XII.  To make a blue.

    Whitening grinded with verdigrease will make a very fine blue.

XIII.  To make a turquin blue.

    German trunsol infused for one night in chamber-lye, then grinded with a discretional quantity of quick-lime, in proportion as you want to have it paler or darker.

XIV.  A fine green for limning.

    Grind some verdigrease, with vinegar, and a very small quantity of tartar; ten add a little quicklime and sap-green, which grind with the rest, and put in shells for keeping.  If it become to hard, dilute it with a drop of vinegar.

XV.  Another for the same purpose.

    Grind on marble stone, verdigrease, and a third of tartar, with white vinegar.

XVI.  To make Sap-green, or blackberry green.

    Express the blackberry juice, when full ripe, add some alum to it, put all in a bladder, and hang in a chimney to dry.

XVII.  To make lake.

    Take three parts of an ounce of Brasil wood; a pint of clear water; one drachm and a half of roch alum; eighteen grains of salt of tartar; the bulk of two filberts of mineral crystal; three quarters of a pound of the whitest sound, or cuttle-fish bones, rasped.  Put all together in a saucepan to boil, till reduced to one third.  Strain it three times trough a coarse cloth.  To make a fine sort, strain it four times.  Then set it in the sun under cover to dry.  That which dries the soonest is the finest.

XVIII.  To make liquid lake.

    Pound some cochineal and alum together; then boil them with a quantity of lemon-peels cut very small.  And when it is come to the right color you want, pass it through a cloth.

XIX.  Another way.

    On a quantity of alum and cochineal pounded and boiled together, pour drop by drop oil of tartar till it comes to a fine color.

XX.  For the vermilion.

    Vermilion becomes very fine in aquavitae, or in child's urine.  But it will be still finer, if you put in aquavitae with a little saffron.  It is used with whipped whites of eggs.

XXI.  For the making of carmine.

    1.  Boil two quarts of spring water in a varnished pipkin, and when it boils throw in seven pugils of pulverised chouam.  After this has thrown two or three pugils of autour, in fine powder, and make it throw four bubbles, take it off the fire and decant it in another clean pipkin.  Then put in this water five ounces of cochineal in powder, and boil it for a quarter of an hour.  Add three pugils of autour, in fine powder, and make it throw four bubbles.  Then add three pugils of Roman alum in powder, and take it out directly from the fire, which must be made of live coals.
    2.  Strain all through a linen cloth, and divide this liquor into several delph vessels, and so let it remain for three weeks.-- At the end of that term, pour off the water by inclination.  You will find under a kind of moldiness, which you must carefully pick off, and then gather the carmine.
    Note.  Every five ounces of cochineal give one of carmine.-- It is to be grinded on marble.  A general opinion prevails, that this operation is best done in the crescent of the moon-- How far it is needful to observe this precept, is left to the wise to determine.

XXII.  Colors fit for expressing the various complexions.

    1.  For women and children, mix a little white and a little tunrsol.
    2.  For men, a mixture of white and vermillion is proper.
    3.  For old folks, you must use some white and ochre.
    4.  For horses, you must use bistre, ochre and white.  The dark brown horses require a little addition of black.  The gray want nothing but bistre and white.   

 

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