[Steppes] more Re: Paints and brushes, ya-ta-ya-ta-ya-ta

[uilliacc]

paints--  by the by, the binder in most modern watercolour or gouache is 
gum arabic, although albumen/egg binders were mainly used in period-- 
and if you're looking for period accuracy on your palette, know that 
most of the dye colours now used in paint production were developed in 
the 19th century including particularly the pthalo's, alizarin and other 
"light fast" colours...

-as for period dyes-- rose madder, and the carmine bases like crimson 
date back to the Renaissance and earlier, rose madder being obtained 
from a crushed root, and Crimson originally obtained for centuries from 
the crushed bodies of a Mediterranean insect the kermes.  A 
meso-american insect the cochineal, replaced the kermes as a crimson 
source shortly after the conquest, because it's dye properties were 
stronger, the cochineal was so prized, it was Spain's second most 
valuable export from the new world, just behind silver--- Dyes have long 
been used in textile production---in paint, most natural dyes however 
tend to be fugitive and degrade when exposed to light-- or in other 
words are not light-fast... and fade quickly... other ancient dyes 
include naturally occuring "lake pigments" such as the dye indigo from 
woad...

for painters, most of the period palette was based on pigment colors...  
and metallic effects were created by "leafing"

for historians, the development of the dye industry, the discovery of  
the process of making "lake" dyes bound to metallic salts and the impact 
on the impressionists of the 19th century, and the expressionists of the 
20th, combined with industrialization, competition, science, espionage, 
coal oil sludge, Quinine, malaria, colonization and aggressive 
nationalism culminating in world wide conflict is a fascinating 
illustration of the butterfly effect/connectivity of art, aesthetics, 
science and culture... all post SCA-period of course...

but I digress---