Which brown/sepia ink would L. da Vinci choose?

[Copsych]

Sometimes Leonard da Vinci used black ink and sometimes brown. What ink most closely approximates the brown color in his sketches?

Gene

You can check out his brown sketches by exploring this website:

 

http://www.mos.org/sln/Leonardo/

Edited February 27, 2007 by Copsych

[FrankB]

Somehow I think that if Senior da Vinci were with us today he would use a wide range of colors in his drawing, especially for human anatomy.

[Richard]

One of the closest modern matches I've seen for the reddish brown color of da Vinci's sketches would be Noodler's Antietam. Nathan actually got the idea for Antietam when he reconstituted some dried 19th-century ink and found it to be that color.

[Lloyd]

Just because his sketches appear brownish today doesn't necessarily mean that they looked brownish at the time they were written. Rust=red/brown.

[Margana]

QUOTE (Richard @ Feb 27 2007, 05:48 AM)

One of the closest modern matches I've seen for the reddish brown color of da Vinci's sketches would be Noodler's Antietam. Nathan actually got the idea for Antietam when he reconstituted some dried 19th-century ink and found it to be that color.

From The Writing Desk a few options...

 

http://margana.com/fpn_images/davinci_red.jpg

[Margana]

And a few more options...

 

http://margana.com/fpn_images/davinci_brn.jpg

[Col]

QUOTE (Lloyd @ Feb 27 2007, 01:48 PM)

Just because his sketches appear brownish today doesn't necessarily mean that they looked brownish at the time they were written.

Perhaps he drew with a rose line.

[JRodriguez]

I just have to say that I'm very impressed with the eye some of you have for colors. And what a plethora of choices for those into brown ink!

[BillTheEditor]

IIRC, many of DaVinci's sketches were done in silverpoint and in chalk or a kind of crayon. They weren't all done in ink. In addition, as someone else has noted, the ink in his journals has almost certainly changed color over the centuries. It was most likely black originally.

[Craig]

If you want to try inks close to the ones da Vinci might have used--though emphatically for dip pens only!--try Kremer inks.

 

http://kremer-pigmente.de/englisch/krpigm06.htm

 

They're a German company but they have a store in Manhattan. When it's in season they offer natural sepia ink made from the ink sacs of cuttlefish (caught by Italian fishermen in the Adriatic), and bister, a brown ink made (as they describe it) by boiling beechwood soot with potash. Kremer inks are shellac-based. I've tried their blue ink and found you have to dilute it about three to one with water to get it to flow right. But it has a beautiful lapis color--and probably it is lapis!

 

Paper & Ink Arts in Woodsboro, Maryland, sells a beautiful iron-gall ink called Blot's, made in England. When it hits oxygen on the page, it "develops" into a deep black. Eventually it will turn brown, like da Vinci's writing, but you'll have to wait about a hundred years. Again, this is a dip pen ink.

 

http://www.paperinkarts.com/en-us/dept_102.html

[maryannemoll]

I'm a brown ink person myself, but I really like the look of the Antietam, and how other members say it looks like dried blood. I suppose, since it's not bulletproof, one could add a little bit of Noodler's Bulletproof Black, and then make the Antietam even darker AND give it a little bulletproof quality.

 

If Noodler's had existed in Da Vinci's time, Antietam would have fascinated him.