Lead + Lead Drier

[Orp]

I was wondering if English Patent Drier would speed up the drying process of Lead White, or if the amount of Lead already in the pigment is the maximum amount of drier sufficient for the volume of oil carrying it?

Thanks

[George O'Hanlon]

Keep in mind that lead white is a not drier. Not all compounds of lead are driers. For example, lead sulfate and lead carbonate are not driers. Adding English Patent Drier, contains two different lead salts and one zinc salt, can aid drying of lead white oil colors.

[sander]

george, looking through the array of new driers you are offering I realize that this is an area of paint chemistry that I have little experience with. Early on, one can get caught up in statements that might be myths, such as, never use any drier to speed up the natural drying of your paint...it's unnatural. That no longer makes sense to me, especially if a drier like the calcium drier aids in "through drying". Can you amplify the concept beyond the product descriptions?

On the slower end of the equation is clove oil and I just wanted to add something here to an earlier post somewhere that asked about "carnation oil" as mentioned by Dali. For years, I glossed over carnation oil since I never encountered it. I assumed it was poppy oil. I did find a couple of old bottles of a light oil by Blockx "pour les teintes claires" that I presumed to be poppy. But now I think that there were some translation problems. You pointed out that clove is derived from the Latin, clavus meaning nail shaped,true, and in Dali's native Catalan, "clau". Interestingly, clau is nail, but "clavell" is both clove and carnation..."clavell d' especia". Still, I can not imagine that Dali meant to use clove oil alone for the palest of tints? Perhaps, I take it all too seriously. For years I could not understand his use of "amber in aspic" until I realized that aspic was another translation problem meaning spike oil.

[Orp]

I thought aspic was a type of wasp...!

[sander]

Orp, Bart is never going to forgive me for injecting this.

[sander]

I appreciate that Natural Pigments supplies detailed product descriptions including Latin source names. Translation problems alone must count for quite a bit of the mystery and confusion when one researches historical materials. Case in point, Safflower Oil from Carthamus tinctorius. Safflower could easily be misunderstood for the mysterious light carnation oil and makes more sense than clove oil.

Safflower flowers are already commonly substituted for the more expensive genuine Saffron ( stigmas of the saffron Crocus sativa). Safflower also has had uses as a red or pink dye, rouge cosmetics, etc. This gives us common names like Rose Carthame. Then there is actual carnation oil, as a fragrant but dark essence or absolute used in perfumes. All of these botanicals grow in the mediterranean and I am reminded of the Carnation farm that is the inspiration for the plot in Jean de Florette one of my all time favorite movies.

Then there all of those carnation carnal fleshy sensual pink words that our poster from Belgium has helped to translate.

[bart johnson]

Sander, no idea what you mean I won't forgive you....

I'd advise you not to put more than the smallest amount of clove oil in any paint. Clove oil will slow drying by just having your palette covered and clove oil under the cover soaked into something or in a small open container. To mix paint with it is technical suicide.

[George O'Hanlon]

The Spanish word for clove is clavo. The Spanish word for carnation is clavel and there is some etymological roots between the two words, but there is no other relationship between the two plants.

Carnations and safflowers are two different flowers belonging to different genus, so I doubt there is confusion between these flowers. Certainly, Dali could not mean clove oil as the binder for light colors. He undoubtedly had in mind the oil from either poppy seeds or safflower seeds, which was translated as "carnation oil" in the English version of his book, Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship. The translation into English of Dali's original text is somewhat clumsy, so I could easily see how mistakes like this could have creeped into his text.

Does any one have a copy of the Spanish text?

Reference
Salvador Dali. Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship. Haakon Chevalier, trans. Courier Dover Publications, 1992. p. 135.

[sander]

I am fortunate to have an original 1948 English translation of 50 Secrets which offers no clue about the original. It may have been in Spanish, but I believe the manuscript was in French. Chevalier also translated Dali's earlier Secret Life,1942, from the French and then, in 1963,Dali on Modern Art, also from the French.

Dali loved to mix up Catalan, Spanish, French and English and his spelling was funnier than Paul's. In 50 Secrets, many of the margin notes are penned in French or in English.

At any rate, I did some experiments today with various oils, dropping them on plain typing paper and making notations in black ball point pen. The clove oil acted as a strong solvent on the ink. All of the black migrated out leaving a light blue. There was no obvious reaction with spike, copaiba, OMS, etc. Clove has some unusual properties and I would advise taking Bart's advice.

[Kenneth Freed]

Sander,
I also possess a copy from 1948 of 50 Secrets which a friend purchased for me. It has the original dust cover. Have you checked prices lately? At one time it was going for a considerable sum.
As I have stated before, I have tried nearly every substance that anyone has ever put in paint. In the early 1980's I decided that I wanted to mix for a portrait painting a Frank Reilly style palatte with neutral gray of three hues. An orange, a yellow and a red. This was an organized palatte of 300 colors, considering that there were 10 values and 10 chromas of each. As such, I wanted it to last. I added clove oil, a couple drops to each of the colors. The palatte that I mixed lasted 24 days before drying out. I wanted to have the painting dry faster, so I worked into a wet cushion that included an oil, an alkyd resin and a solvent. The painting layers dried in 3 days.
It happened to be an important painting to me, it was a portrait of my father. It is in the collection of my mother and I have visited it often since I painted it many years ago. There has been no change in the painting during these many years. Perhaps it will self destruct in a 100 years, who knows-but it looks very good still.

Would I recommend this now as a technique for others? Probably not. But I would tell you that working on panels will allow for a multitude of sins.

[ 12. December 2009, 13:08: Message edited by: Kenneth Freed ]