Wonderful. I was first told about dragon's blood as a pigment by Daniel Chatto at the RDS in 2016. A Traditional Chinese Medicine herbalist gave me some solid crystals of it as it is used in herbal preparations. I ground it up for pigment, but it gave a disappointingly pale and transparent red, the colour of dried blood, when added to gum and water. I think both the quality of your resin and the method of preparation were better than my (then rookie) attempts.
I don't think there's any fault of yours, my result also looks exactly like dried blood, only applied more thickly. Fun as it is to try, there isn't any way this would make a good painting pigment in the conventional sense – different of course if you do want the dried blood effect, but I believe the colour is fugitive as well.
The tree resin dragon's blood barely dissolves in water but it does dissolve in alcohol, clove oil and (I think) vinegar. Unless bought from an artists pigment supplier dragon's blood is probably a different preparation made from rattan tree fruit. This is sold for incense, herbal medicines etc and behaves differently. It isn't soluble in water either but does dissolve in alcohol. For ink it needs a binder of alcohol-soluble gum (frankincense, pine resin, mastic)(gum arabic, gum tragacanth and cherry sap don't work as they are only water-soluble)
Thanks, this is really interesting. Next time I need to order from Kremer I'll get some to give it a go. In the context of this study though, I had to stick to the recipes supplied and the fact it's a poor way to use dragon's blood tells us that there wasn't an art tradition of working with it, and that it's included for its symbolic or medicinal aura. Which makes sense because dissolving in alcohol isn't practiced in the islamic corpus as far as I know, everything is water-soluble.
loving all these articles - thank you for sharing your knowledge with us
My pleasure!
Wonderful. I was first told about dragon's blood as a pigment by Daniel Chatto at the RDS in 2016. A Traditional Chinese Medicine herbalist gave me some solid crystals of it as it is used in herbal preparations. I ground it up for pigment, but it gave a disappointingly pale and transparent red, the colour of dried blood, when added to gum and water. I think both the quality of your resin and the method of preparation were better than my (then rookie) attempts.
I don't think there's any fault of yours, my result also looks exactly like dried blood, only applied more thickly. Fun as it is to try, there isn't any way this would make a good painting pigment in the conventional sense – different of course if you do want the dried blood effect, but I believe the colour is fugitive as well.
The tree resin dragon's blood barely dissolves in water but it does dissolve in alcohol, clove oil and (I think) vinegar. Unless bought from an artists pigment supplier dragon's blood is probably a different preparation made from rattan tree fruit. This is sold for incense, herbal medicines etc and behaves differently. It isn't soluble in water either but does dissolve in alcohol. For ink it needs a binder of alcohol-soluble gum (frankincense, pine resin, mastic)(gum arabic, gum tragacanth and cherry sap don't work as they are only water-soluble)
Thanks, this is really interesting. Next time I need to order from Kremer I'll get some to give it a go. In the context of this study though, I had to stick to the recipes supplied and the fact it's a poor way to use dragon's blood tells us that there wasn't an art tradition of working with it, and that it's included for its symbolic or medicinal aura. Which makes sense because dissolving in alcohol isn't practiced in the islamic corpus as far as I know, everything is water-soluble.