From skin inking to silk painting, people have been using a number of techniques to ink with metallic pigments. Inking has been around for many centuries. Chinese from the 7th century on have made inking popular with their calligraphies and drawings of the natural world. The invention of inksticks was attributed to Tien-Lcheu, 2500 B. C. To use it, artists grounded a small piece of the stick and mixed with water. Ink was made with soot (from burning pine trees) mixed with animal glue (gelatin made from horns or hides) and sometimes incense or medicinal herbs such as clove or comfrey in order to preserve the sticks. Good ink came from the quality of the glue. Oil soot ink was mixed with pigments to create different colors. For two millennia ink was the major medium of painting. The art gained popularity in Japan and Korea as well. Gold leaves were added to some paintings. See below how to paint golden bamboo: In the 3rd millennium BC, another type of ink was invented. It was from iron, salt and ferrous sulfate mixed with tannin obtained from gull nuts. The oxidation created the ink. Read more about it here: https://irongallink.org/igi_indexd7ce.html Ancient civilizations have used mica in paints and pots in order to give a reflective shine to objects. Mica is nowadays used in cosmetics and paints to add glitter. Mayans used glittering paint. “Ancient Mayan temple builders discovered and used lustrous pigments to make their buildings dazzle in the daylight.” (See the article here: https://www.sciencealert.com/mayans-used-glittering-paints) Other cultures also inked, like Egyptians thousands of years ago. Egyptians preferred metallic inks. They added a varnish to conserve the paint. In Egypt, they burned organic materials to get coal, such as wood or oil, then they mixed it with a binder to allow the particles of coal to adhere/stick to the paper. The red color on ancient papyrus comes from iron oxide. Red was used for headlines. They made the famous Egyptian blue by “heating together quartz sand, copper, calcium oxide, and an alkali such as natron.” (Rachel Danzing) Nowadays, a metallic ink is a regular color mixed with a shiny material such as copper, aluminum, bronze or zinc or micca. Meredith Dillman used metallic watercolors mixed with acrylics to paints some of the most amazing fantasy characters. See below: See more Metallic paints with watercolor below: See a demonstration on Inking technique plus metallic watercolors below:
1 Comment
3/9/2022 10:43:28 am
Excellent article! Your post is essential today. Thanks for sharing, by the way.
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In 2015, 2016 & 2017
In 2016 & 2017
Illustrator
I am Sussu Leclerc and I started writing and illustrating picture books thanks to the Smart Dummies event hosted on Facebook by amazing Dani Duck. Archives
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