chelydra

To your last question (fugitive colors): Because there are color-fetishists who want to try the most traditional pigments, some of which have delicate elusive hues you can't find with anything else. Vermillion (which by the way comes in all kinds of shades, even where it's the real thing) is just slightly more delicate and alive-looking than cadmium reds, and it sometimes stays good as new; I haven't seen it turn black. The manufacturers do include the warnings so they can't be accused of selling bad paint. Personally, I find even the term "fugitive colors" quite appealing - like getting involved with bandits or revolutionaries, as in a gothic romance novel. You know your love is doomed but it adds to the frisson. Likewise with toxics: attraction to abusive dangerous partners who might kill you one day when you least expect it. So you try to be gentle and cautious with them. I think the paint companies understand this appeal.

About cotton - I don't know why it is. I guess it's just a wee bit more absorbent than linen, enough to make all the difference. There seems to me to be no difference between different grades of cotton or linen in terms of this effect.

Oddly enough, my brother-in-law was talking at dinner tonight about the results of painting with oils on unprimed linen! Total coincidence, and I couldn't say so because I want my family to believe I'm working 24/7 on this job during this strange, antisocial, prolonged visit with them. What he said was sort of like what I said the other night: the linseed merges with the linen fabric over time and the result is quite strange and indescribable. I'd never experienced it myself, just heard you shouldn't do it.

More about the toxics, and I'll try to be more serious about it this time. Inhaling dust is the deadliest thing you can do, at least it is when the substance in question is a mineral with long-term toxic effects (as opposed to a fast-acting poison that gets digested and passes from gut into bloodstream). You can eat plutonium with no ill effects, but a couple of ounces of plutonium powder, if evenly distributed by air, could cause millions of cancers. I guess our digestive tracts evolved to handle unsavory stray particles of stuff, whereas our lungs were never intended to contain anything but pure fresh outdoor air. In nature, there's rarely ever any foreign substance in the air, and if there is, our noses generally detect it in time to avoid inhaling a lot of it. (Actually oxygen itself started out as a thoroughly toxic by-product of photosynthesis, but then our ancestors figured out how to use it as fuel, and anyone who didn't join the movement had to go live in compost heaps and intestines, where their descendants are still hiding in the safe wet darkness - anaerobic bacteria, which is what all of us once were, unless we were plants.)
I'm rambling on... where was I? Oh yeah. That was all just by way of saying that it makes sense that pastels would be far more worrying than oil paints. Watercolors would lie somewhere in between, since the pigment-particles don't get sealed in by a coating of oil.
To put the issue of toxic art supplies into perspective... Generally these days artists are aware of these hazards, and not only take precautions if using hazardous stuff, but don't release too much of it back into the environment, although the disposal of palette-scrapings and rolled-up old tubes should probably be a concern. (Not an easy problem to solve.)
BUT consider, by way of putting it into perspective, the insane use of lawn and garden chemicals, turning whole suburban communities into toxic waste dumps in effect. These are chemicals synthesized for the purpose of killing organisms. Some were developed as military nerve gasses; some were used as Auschwitz to efficiently and quickly murder vast numbers of people. There are new chemicals coming into the marketplace all the time, and no government agency in the world can do even a tiny fraction of the necessary tests for hazardous effects before they're approved for sale, and no agency anywhere properly regulates their use. And these are all utterly useless; it's a total scam. The chemicals screw up the little grass-plants that form lawns, and then they sell more chemicals to solve the problems the previous chemicals created. Earthworms, songbirds, bees, butterflies, lightning bugs, amphibians, turtles, ants, pet cats, barefoot children - all are just as vulnerable to the poisons as the species they're supposed to control. The target species generally develop immunities a lot faster than the non-target species. Some lawn chemicals are well known to be related to estrogen (similar molecules or whatever) and accumulate in breast tissue. On Long Island (or Lawn Island, because most what isn't paved over has been turned into emerald-green lawns and golf courses), breast cancer has been at epidemic levels for decades now. Nerve ailments, some quite mysterious, seem to be increasingly common.
AND YET - I would be willing to bet that the amount of internet verbiage devoted to art supplies' hazards is greater than what's spent on lawn chemicals. And I would be willing to bet that the quantities of poisons in the lawn & garden trade are about a thousand times larger in tonnage and ten thousand times larger in total toxicity, and a hundred thousand times larger in terms of total health effects and total ecological consequences.
This is not to say that art supplies' hazards shouldn't be taken seriously, including the whole supply chain from the mining lead and mercury to whatever eventually happens to the palette-scapings and used-up tubes I put out in the trash because toxic waste collections happen so rarely and they probably don't dispose of anything safely anyway.
Ramble, ramble, ramble...
The is more about my reluctance to deal with my exploding jpeg issue than it is about sharing useful information, but I'm sure that's already obvious to anyone who's been reading through this thread of messages.

chelydra

Minor error that might be worth a correction, going back several messages - I meant to write tiffs OR photoshop's own format (.tif and .psd, respectively) are more rugged than jpegs. What I wrote earlier made it look like tiffs ARE Photoshop's own format, which is not the case.

chelydra

There must be more than the four of us who draw or paint, or sculpt, crochet, or lay mosaics, or some other kind of artful manual labor... No?

five

it's just us ...

By the way for a long time I preferred dry media. I could give up control more easily with it. Now, I must admit I like watching water color and ink soak in. I can give up control with ink but for some feel the need to control paint (even water colors). I think it is because ink floats. Picking up oil paint floating in water (marbling) is okay, too.

Qsilv

oooh marbling! and floating gossamer asphaltum onto etching plates... and viscosity prints... and... nooooo... MUST . GET . BACK . TO . w o r k . . .

(there are definitely others, just not as ..er.. brazen) ;>

chelydra

Brazen? Us?

inked_gemini

Intimidating is more like it, lol. But absolutely fascinating. I've learned a lot in the last three pages.

I'm also convinced that I don't create art to the degree that you four are doing it. The stuff I do isn't commercial or professional. I do it for myself and the occasional friend or family member that might commission me for whatever reason. I've done a number of portraits. Graphite is what I'm most comfortable with. And I do dabble in charcoal every now and then. I've always thought I did pretty well with ink and marker, but after reading about Winsor Newton this and Aurora that...well...I'd just feel silly going on at any length about my wide collection of fine point Sharpies.

I'm not painterly at all. I simply don't like it. So when I want to do pieces in color I use a combination of oil based colored pencils and a set of Pentel color pens that I've had for 10+ years. I put the oil based pencil directly onto the paper and then a layer of ink/marker on top of the oil. And so on and so forth and I won't bore you with the details.

It's time consuming, but I have done pretty large pieces this way. I don't know why I do it this way either. I sort of just stumbled upon this method and stuck with it because it worked.

Alright. I'll shut up now. It's time for bed anyway.

(smiling, tucking her crayons in her purse, and walking away from the cool kid table )

five

Don't be quiet

I like sharpies! I used them to ink in animations once upon a time, then discovered I liked cut paper animation better. A bit crazy, multiple sessions of 12 hours under the camera for 30 seconds to a minute of film, or something like that. But I really liked the way it flowed and the in the zone process of moving the small pieces bit by bit.

Description of your method sounds interesting. I've not used oil based pencils. My only question would be how archival using ink on top of oil based media is.

inked_gemini

It's actually a pretty archivally sound process. I’ve never had an issue with the ink drying and flaking off. On the first picture I did using this method, I used a fixative (btw, the fixative I use is hairspray—don’t judge me). But I haven’t used any since, and the pictures I’ve done are still intact and without any color fading or cracking. I rarely just leave a layer of ink on top of the oil, though. Usually I use tortillons or even Q-tips to blend the two media together. They actually blend really well which is why I like to work with this specific combination of mixed media. It allows for subtle shading without sacrificing the vibrancy of the colors.

I’ve tried this with soft core pencils which are wax based. It works equally as well. The only problem is that if I choose not to cover the entire pencil layer with ink, I end up with serious wax bloom issues. Then I absolutely have to use a fixative which I would prefer not to do.

chelydra

There are a lot of different inks, and it seems likely you're using a kind that either doesn't have additives (like shellac, to make India ink waterproof), or else maybe it's the additives that are binding the ink with the other stuff. Whatever you're doing, it seems to work. Might be a good idea to share the specific kind of ink you were using in case anyone else wants to try it. (I can't visualize what you're describing so I can't try it. Same applies to Qsilv's riff on gossamer asphaltum.)

five

Pentel ink pens -- she said it earlier.

Not everything I do pretends to be archival. I did a series of pieces with graphite on newspaper as the substrate several years back because I want them to age into that yellowish look; it's about time to open it back up and see how the aging is going. I plan to enclose them later floated in some kind of laminate or acrylic fluid that hardens and solidifies, though I have not figured out what yet. Newspaper, though, will keep for a long time if properly maintained.

I am going to have to find a time and place (press) to try viscous printing, too. Another thing to add to the list. Ages ago, I did colored monoprints with watercolor where the layers of paint manage to occupy different layers on the plate and then on the print without being mush. Interesting how that worked out. If you want to give this a try, get a piece of plexi, scratch the surface with sand paper, apply YES glue and let it dry. Paint on it (in the reverse order of the colors you want to sit on top of the print, e.g. bottom colors on the plate end up top colors on the print (more or less, there is some bleed through). Wet good quality printing paper (BFK, Arches, etc.) and run the plexi plate through the printing press (you have to adjust the pressure as it's not a metal plate). Or drive over it with the car (cheap press for relatively small plates).

chelydra

I love the punch line. Kinda puts all our fussy pedantic technique-chatter into perspective. I guess no matter what you do (linen, rabbit skins, etc.), you can always run a car over it to complete the process.