Book of Kells Project: Border, Washes and Finishing Touches

After all the main elements were finished, some details required creatively mixing color.   

Orange/Oráiste

This color is conceptually a modern invention.  It isn't that the ancient Irish didn't see orange.  Linguistically they just considered it a type of dark yellow. There's some very interesting documentation about how different languages develop words for colors depending on their lifestyles, the cultural importance of the color and it frequency or rarity.

Even in English the word for "orange" is the same as the non-native fruit, implying in the original Anglo-Saxon we also thought of "orange" as a kind of yellow or gold.  The point being I needed ORANGE for a design element. And so I did it the typical way and mixed  red and yellow, or rather, some madder lake and tansy lake.  

 

It was a reasonable result, pretty if not authentic.

Around this time I also mixed up the mullien lake, made without chalk.  I wanted a  less opaque yellow for some details.

Pink/Bándearg:

I actually had some pink madder lake I could have ground up.  But the zinc and madder lake were still available and I was tired out with grinding.  So I made a mix with a little water to wash and detail a background.

Grape Hyacinth and Bluebells inks:

I did not freeze these like I did with the Iris Green. That was a mistake.  I did add alcohol, thinking that would be enough to preserve them.  While they did not mold, or otherwise physically degrade, their colors suffered.  The grape hyacinth was no longer purple or even lavender, but a weak yellowish green. Ditto for the Bluebell Ink, that also lost it's magical two tone quality.

Nonetheless, these are colors useful to tint backgrounds. See, as the art was finishing, I was noticing how very BRIGHT the background was compared to the art in the Book of Kells.  This is down to using vellum and the age of the vellum.  Considering the quality of the lighting at the time, the monks would probably have preferred a bright white background if they could get it.  But stylistically, it was too much so I was looking for something to dim it, just slightly.  These inks served well.

There was also mixing and blending for small details, like madder lake and zinc to make a silvery white for the moon.

"Crottle:

This lichen ink was also a useful background wash, mainly for the snakes.  Of all the washes it came the closest to imitating old vellum.  Maybe I should have used it from the beginning.