[split] Jorge's Retracer Thread: darker ink, retracing of text and drawings

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Most of the other examples appeal to strangeness: weird glyph, unnatural pose, strange arms, etc, combined with a different ink color

The key is not just strangeness, but apparent inability by the retracer to understand the drawing or glyph.  For instance, on f73v, the Boobs Retracer (my Rt3) apparently mis-interpreted the lower outlines of the nymphs' thighs as the top outlines of a row of barrels, and proceeded to "restore" (rather crudely) the "faded" ends of the barrels.  

   

He would not have made that mistake if he was the same scribe who drew the nymphs.

One very simple explanation for why the crown, the eyes and some other elements of some images are of different color is they were just tiny and detailed, so the artist switched to a small stylus or some other drawing instrument, which grabs the ink in a different way, or which can be dipped deeper into the inkwell, or which uses a different preparation of ink entirely.

Indeed there are many places where ink density and color variations can be explained by the original Scribe himself going back and retracing some of his own work, for any reason.  Often I cannot decide between that and a much later intervention.

But the explanation above seems quite unlikely for the things that I ascribe to the Boobs Retracer, because on many Zodiac pages we see the same details (among other things) being redrawn in that darker ink: left breasts, nipples, eyes, belly buttons, hair, and the "showercaps".  And in some places we can see the lighter ink poking out by the side of the dark one.  

I cannot imagine the process you described above being repeated for every one of those pages: draw things in brown ink, change ink and pen, draw things in dark ink, go to the next page, repeat.  The brown ink parts must have been drawn first over the whole section, then the dark ink details were added or retraced again for the whole section, in a second pass.

But if we accept this solution -- two passes over the whole section -- then the question is how much time went between the two passes.  Why should we assume hours or days, instead of centuries?

All the best, --stolfi