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Let's see if I can word this so it makes sense. I have been reading about how the colors in Van Gogh's bedroom picture faded over the centuries. This raised a question in my mind. Ignore cameras and other electronic equipment. Just talking about the tools that an artist takes in hand to create a picture, is there any medium today where the colors do not fade over the years as the old colors faded?
choose a color or medium that stays the same with age / time. how about stone?
Are you saying that the colors in stone (the elements with their different colors) do not fade or bleach out in time? I am vague on this now but I once read a book called "Color" which told how the ancients took various elements from earth or stone or plants and created the colors they wanted. But, I think they did fade. What were Van Gogh's paints made of that caused them to fade? Then, my question is: have they in any way, overcome this tendency of their colors to fade.
I do realize that light, especially sunlight, causes fading. Have they found a way to prevent this fading?
start out with a medium that is already in it's time faded state. and you end up where you began.
That might be true but is it improvement? In other words, did anyone figure out how to stop his colors from eventually fading?
Also, unless I am wrong, all colors exposed to strong light (sunlight) eventually fade to white. Have you ever seen a cave painting out in the open? But I imagine the people who painted on the walls of dark caves also painted elsewhere.
I'm not so sure the colors faded as much as they get layered with the dust of the ages. See how bright the colors are after they restored the ceiling at the Sistene chapel. Before and After Pictures
The masters hand ground paints formulas have stood up to time as revealed in the Sistine Chapel and other masterpieces that have been cleaned and restored. The artwork that has failed is usually due to improper conditions that affected the artwork like the Last Supper. High humidity, curtains and poor restoration attempts, all affected the paint to make it fragile and crumble off, combined with air pollution and dust dulled it.
hi, Hazel...
Yes. There are many pigments today that will never fade for all practical purposes. But under prolonged, strong, direct sunlight, every known pigment will fade as time goes by. How much time, though, can be a couple of hundred years outside. Indoors, the same colors are in practicality eternal.
The most fade-proof colors are always ground mineral pigments. Cadmium and titanium, both relatively rare metallic minerals, provide a wide range of permanent colors that depend on how high the basic metal powder is oxidized by using heat. Both produce white, yellow, orange, and red.
For centuries, metallic lead produced the same colors, and was even better. White lead was still in widespread use as an artist's material when I first began painting. It's a shame that lead tends to slowly vaporize and is so toxic, because it's superior, more versatile and cheaper. The white lead makeup may have killed the Pharaoh is was applied on, but it sure kept him a good looking corpse 2000 years later.
Dyes are traditionally more fugitive by far than pigments. Dyes are natural or man-made chemical mixes that are distilled to become strong and intense color. Red dye is the most fugitive of all, followed by yellow. Blue dyes fade, but are more permanent than either of the others. Because dyes can produce colors pigments cannot, there are synthetic dyes that are almost permanent. Pthalocyanide compounds create quite permanent pigments and very long-lasting dyes.
The color magenta cannot be made using pigments. It's only made using dyes.
Watercolors very often have dye bases, and have always been prone to fading in long sunlight exposure. Oils create their own protective varnish over time as the oils and solvents dry up, but enough sunlight will fade them. Depending on the paint, some oils darken under sunlight.
Acrylic paint is completely synthetic, and the acrylic base never darkens under sunlight. Whatever is mixed into the clear base can fade or not, depending.
Ultraviolet light does the most fading damage. UV protective glass effectively solves the fading problem, no matter what materials are used.
Acids that are present in some of the bounds- the materials used to paint on- can also cause fading. Acid-free grounds prevent this. Papyrus, cotton and linen are all inherently acid free. A pine board, on the other hand, has a ton of acids in it.
One of the very most acid free grounds ever is plaster. Plaster is made from ground gypsum, a mineral. Gypsum is a very light grey-white color. When white marble is added, plaster becomes a bright white. Both minerals are refractive- they throw light back, not just absorb it.
When pigment powder is mixed into it, or painted onto it while the plaster is still very moist, the colors are very fade resistant because they are suspended in an opaque white that's essentially very fine white rock. Plaster is what kept the pine boards from eating up the paint that was applied to them.
The Mona Lisa is painted on a pine board. Wood was used as a ground until the invention of oil paint.
The masters hand ground paints formulas have stood up to time as revealed in the Sistine Chapel and other masterpieces that have been cleaned and restored. The artwork that has failed is usually due to improper conditions that affected the artwork like the Last Supper. High humidity, curtains and poor restoration attempts, all affected the paint to make it fragile and crumble off, combined with air pollution and dust dulled it.
So, the fading is due to environmental damage and nothing innate in the original colors. And that is what I was very clumsily trying to ask. I think the answer is 'no, no one has figured out how to prepare paints that can repel this damage'. No yet.
So, the fading is due to environmental damage and nothing innate in the original colors. And that is what I was very clumsily trying to ask. I think the answer is 'no, no one has figured out how to prepare paints that can repel this damage'. No yet.
Thank you all.
Hazel,
Go back and read banjo mike's post. He's spot on. Then look up "lightfastness". Then go to these two websites to see just how different pigments stack up: handprint.com and artiscreation.com. It's not really the medium, although oil and acrylic can protect some pigments a little more than watercolor, it's the pigments themselves. All artist grade tubes of paint, regardless or whether they're oil, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, vinyl, etc. will tell you what pigments are in them and what the lightfast ratings are. There are also some good books on the history of pigments which are not only informative but quite entertaining - check amazon.com.
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