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

[oshfdk]

By the way, do you believe that the details I have attributed to the Boobs Retracer (the right breasts and belly buttons, "scalloped showercaps", the "Habsburg crown", the "robot tentacle" etc.) are the work of the original Scribe too?  If so, do you think that they were drawn just after each folio was completed, or in a single pass after the whole section/book was completed?

I have no strong preference for theories when it comes to drawings, I'm mostly concerned with the text. For me nothing changes substantially whether the drawings are mostly original or heavily altered. However, many examples I've been shown of "obvious retracing in images" seem consistent with the artist using another much finer tool for parts of the images that require higher precision. Whether it was the same artist or a different one, I don't know.

And how about the isolated dark glyphs in the midst of lighter ones, like these from f40r:

Are they quirks of the "shape-shifting pen", or cases of backtracing by the original Scribe?  If the latter, aren't those examples of "inhuman" perfect retracing (as I defined it)?

If there are no abundant examples of obvious separate lighter strokes clearly peeking from under the dark strokes, this is not retracing to me.

There can be many possible explanations of these dark glyphs: 
- ink defects. For example, gooey droplets of dark ink suspended in lighter ink
- out of order writing. For example, grille based ciphers
- bad vellum surface. Note that in the image from your post some of the dark glyphs appear in patches that span several lines, which would be consistent with vellum that mostly wouldn't easily take/react with ink, except in certain spots.

I find each of these three possible explanations substantially more believable than the invisible retracer one.