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

[Jorge_Stolfi]

It's quite possible under any of the explanations above that originally and for a while after the manuscript was created it looked neat with nearly the same shade in all the strokes. It's only with time that some fraction of the ink faded or flaked and another fraction stayed creating the mess we can see now.

But still my objections above to the "fickle ink/pen/vellum" explanation hold. Or are you saying that there were several Scribes, who alternated at writing a few glyphs at a time, with different pens and inks?

And anyway there are hundreds of examples where a dark outline imperfectly and wrongly retraces a lighter one. Like nymphs with double buttocks and other odd anatomy on f79v, f80v, f70v1 etc.

I guess I will have to post a video of myself doing perfect retracing on glyphs of VMS size.  Hang on. (I am 75, with two cataract operations so I can't focus closer than ~50cm, and I haven't used a pen for final art in over 20 years.  But I bet I can do it, with only a bit of practice...)

All the best, --stolfi