Do Herbal A and Herbal B correspond to differences in imagery?

[Koen G]

What seems incomplete in the Voynich MS is in fact the painting.

I agree, though people like yourself and Nick Pelling understand this better than I do - I can imagine it was an issue as soon as color scans were available. What makes the matter more complex, is that the situation for each section is different, but there is a general trend of decline as a section progresses. In the Zodiac folios, disappearance of color (among which a ton of red) goes hand in hand with simplification of the figures. There is also something I think of as the "Rosettes palette", which is only yellow and blues.

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Getting back to the application of red in Herbal A / Scribe 1 folios, something I didn't mention in my post is the curious case of f101. To me, it looks almost certain that the recto side was forgotten by the red painter, while the verso got its intended share of red.

   

Since all other colors are present here (several greens, brown, blue, yellow), this page again suggests that red was a separate, final pass.