Doodle of the day

[spqrblues]

Today's doodle was going to be a comic in the regular lineup, but the idea was just a little bit too silly :)





This version was made with watercolours created by hand from some pigments I picked up a long while ago--all of them pigments used in ancient Roman painting: Yellow Ochres, Red Ochres, Brown Siennas, Lamp Black, Cinnabar (equivalent), and Green Earth. Which is close to the prehistoric cave-painting palette, except for the bright Cinnabar red. One thing I don't have on my palette yet is an ancient-style blue (which might be made from a pigment created by the Egyptians called Blue Frit, or made from Lapis Lazuli). It took a long time for artists to come up with a more vivid blue pigment that was stable and was not as hideously expensive as ground-up gemstones.

I don't know whether I made these watercolours well enough to last a couple of thousand years, but they do scan pretty nicely.
 

Comments

[corvideye.livejournal.com]

Nifty! Daniel Smith has an ultramarine genuine (lapis), but I haven't splurged to try it yet. This is a nice palette, though, very evocative of the time. I love the sense of continuity in those earth pigments, that humanity has used them for as long as intentional marks were made.