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

[oshfdk]

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.

For starters, I'm not even sure I understand what you think happened here with the thighs and the barrels.

But more generally, this logic presupposes that you understand something about what it was supposed to depict, but the retracer, who according to your theory certainly saw more of the now faded original and maybe saw details and shapes that now faded into oblivion, somehow couldn't grasp the idea of the original artist. I find this a bit self-contradictory.

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.

We have no idea about the contents of the book. For example, if the images are mnemonics, which is quite possible for the XV century, maybe certain elements were highlighted by the artist on purpose.
Or maybe it's exactly the "unlikely" explanation I gave above, that the artist, knowing that certain elements require a much more fine writing tool, would create basic shapes with the normal instrument and reserved a fine tip stylus for the same list of objects on each page: eyes, breasts, nipples, belly buttons. After all, the nymphs are tiny, their features are minute.

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?

If we remove the part drawn in the different ink, will the images still look complete? This is not a trick question, I really didn't look into this. The lack of belly buttons and left breasts is possible, what about the lack or eyes and hair?