CXII. Directions for colouring prints.

Valuable Secrets concerning Arts and Trades:
or Approved Directions, from the best Artists, for the Various Methods...
Printed by Thomas Hubbard,
Norwich, 1795Chap. V. Secrets concerning colours & painting.

§ VIII. Preparations of colours of all sorts for oil, water, and crayons.


1. All the colours which are used for colouring prints are grinded with gum-water; the calcined green only excepted, which grinds with vinegar.

2. The chief of these colous are, fine azure, vermilion, Venetian lake, fine verditure, white lead, calcined green, umber, Cologn earth, indigo, French berries' juice, yellow ocher, yellow massicot, white massicot, brown ocher, bistre, or, prepared soot, lamp-black, and brown red.

3. For complections, you make a mixture of white and vermilion, more or less, according as you want the colour more or less bloody. For the lips, it is a mixture of lake and vermilion. And the mades are made with white and vermilion, and a great deal of umber.

4. For fair hair, you join a good deal of white with very little umber. If a carrotty colour, take yellow ocher and brown red; the shade with bistre and lake mixed together. If light and like silver, you only mix some black and white and umber together.

5. Cloaths are made, if linen, with white lead and a little blue; if stuffs, with white lead alone, and the shades with a grey colour, made by means of a mixture of black and white lead together. If a white cloth, you must make a mixture of white and umber together, and you shade it with a compound of umber and black. If a red cloth, use vermilion in the lighter parts of the folds; lake and vermilion for the clear shades; and the lake alone, laid on the vermilion, will form the dark shades.