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loving all these articles - thank you for sharing your knowledge with us

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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.

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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)

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