SPQR Blues et cetera

This is another paper made by St Cuthberts Mill, called Bockingford. It's 140lb cold press, like the Millford paper, though it feels ever so slightly stiffer, and the texture is ever so slightly rougher. When doused with the same amount of water as I put on the Millford, it warped and didn't dry back flat on its own like the Millford--but it flattened out after I forgot it in the scanner for a while. Layering on this paper is easier; I've been adding layer after layer on the skin tone, and not only didn't accidentally scrub off the previous layers of paint (as with the Millford), but see no damage to the paper.

The manufacturer says: "traditionally made on a cylinder mould machine...surface is created using natural woollen felts that give it a distinctive random texture. Appreciated for its excellent colour lifting abilities. This is an extremely forgiving watercolour paper."

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At this rate I'll actually fill a sketchbook. It's been a while since I've done that.

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I'm making my way through the pages of that Stillman & Birn Alpha sketchbook and, y'know, I don't hate it. It's ok. One good thing about it has been that, because it's been such a challenge to see whether it can live up to its hype, I've been filling the pages with test pieces, instead of being too timid to "ruin" the book by doing art wrong.

This sketch took me a while to figure out, and the pencils were erased many times before the page was inked then the light wash was put on. The paper held up extremely well to all the erasing, and although it seemed to buckle a lot with the water, it's flattening out. Not completely flat, but no worse than the previous pages.

I was going to watercolour the whole thing, add in more Felix-y details, and include Venus in the drawing, but started liking it as is. Of course, he might see Venus anyway. It's hard to tell with him.

Alternatively, he might be describing a fish that got away....

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Hmm. This just dredged up a memory. Once when I drew something and didn't completely define each finger, the editor said it looked like the character's fingers had been "fused together in a horrible industrial accident." I'm not bothered.
 

(pic #1: Lapis Lazuli swatches on the right, modern Ultramarine swatch on the left.)

I've been playing with Lapis Lazuli blue in my ancient palette since I acquired a small amount of powdered pigment, supposedly from the same source the Romans (and later painters) used. It's not the super-expensive super-high quality called Fra Angelico Blue, but even a medium-nice grade can be 40 times the cost of, say, red ochre (which, to be fair, is basically dirt).


(pic #2: unsuccessful Egyptian Blue paint (over black ink). It's basically just sand barely adhered to the page.)

Maybe because of this, I was very careful when mixing my ten bucks worth of pigment into paint, and my first attempt turned out very well. Much more highly pigmented than, say, the Daniel Smith brand Lapis Lazuli Genuine watercolour. The picture (pic #1) doesn't fully do it justice. There's something about it that sets it apart from the modern synthetic version of Ultramarine (Lapis Lazuli was also originally called Ultramarine, "from across the sea," since the stones for it were imported). My Lapis Lazuli paint was much more successful than my attempts at getting Egyptian Frit Blue (considered the first synthetic pigment) to work in watercolour.


(pic #3: The darkest blue here is one layer of the concentrated version of the paint.)

Over the weekend I took a few hours break from work to experiment with the Lapis Lazuli paint left in the mixing cup when I made the first small batch of paint. Waste not, want not--my initial intention was just to get the paint out of the cup to use. It's not quite the Fra Angelico extraction method, and I'm starting with a lower grade of pigment, but I was able to precipitate out different grades of pigment particles and get a more concentrated version in the paint binder.

I'm a novice at making paint, whether watercolour, tempera, or encaustic. Who knows whether I'm filtering out the impurities or just making a mess. But I like the result.