Kraplak red: description, application and photo

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Kraplak - from the German krapplack (kraplak, kraplak varnish) - the paint is intensely red, but darker than carmine. Like the pigment mentioned above, as well as cormorant and purple, it is a red organic dye and has been used since ancient Egypt.

The color of red dark (and sometimes light) kraplak is called kumach in Russia. This is the color of blood, the color of the flag of the first country of the Soviets - the USSR.

Until the middle of the 19th century, kraplak was produced only from the roots of plants of the madder family (madder dyed, R. tinctorum and other species), processed by various methods and widely used to obtain artistic paints, pigments for fabrics, carpets, etc. found application in medicine. Depending on the method of processing the plant material, paint was obtained in bright shades of purple, bright red, and less commonly used: orange, canary yellow and other colors.

Craps from organic raw materials were replaced by synthetic analogues after the possibility of synthesizing organic dyes. This made the process cheaper and easier.obtaining, but still obtaining coloring pigments is a complex and expensive production.

Natural red dye from plants

The brightest paints used by artists of all time were obtained from natural materials: purple - from snails, carmine - from cochineal worms, cinnabar - from the red mineral mercury, indigo and kraplak - from plants, etc. Methods the production of paints was quite complicated, only grams of coloring pigment were obtained from several kilograms of raw materials. It was also difficult to obtain the raw materials we are considering, red kraplak was especially valued.

Natural organic red dyes are still used in cosmetics and the food industry, despite their relatively high cost, because, unlike synthetic counterparts, they are more resistant to light and less harmful. They are still used traditionally, for example, in carpet weaving in the countries of the East. Dyed with natural dyes, including speckled red, carpets are highly valued as they retain their brightness and richness of tones for centuries.

Red paint for oil painting and watercolor

In the Middle Ages, red kraplak was necessary for performing artwork when working on frescoes. It was used to work on oil and tempera paintings on walls, sails and plafonds of cathedrals, usually as an additional shade of red with carmine and purple. It gave artists the ability to expand the red range of the palette.

Then kraplak was one offew bright red pigments. It was actively used overlaying cinnabar to remove the dullness of this paint, enhance the color and give depth and sonority to the red color through glaze.

In addition, the kraplak strengthened the surface of the painting. It was used to sign the clothes of noble people, draperies, as in the portrait of Philip IV Velasquez.

El Greco very often used kraplak, applying it over lighter colors, as, for example, was done in the painting “Christ driving the merchants out of the temple.”

Vermeer set off their cheeks and lips, for example, in the famous "Girl with a Pearl Earring". With a mixture of kraplak and black paint, he made sketches and underpaintings of paintings, painted dark areas of the skin.

Professional tempera, oil and watercolor kits still include Kraplak red in their composition, along with carmine.

Obtaining natural kraplak

The plants suitable for making paint are only three of more than 50 species of the madder family. They are subshrubs or small shrubs with paniculate or racemose inflorescences.

Underground parts of the plant are used to obtain kraplak. Pigment paint is quite difficult and long. First, the raw materials are dried in small piles. After a few days, it is collected and further dried. Then it is cleaned from the top layer, crushed and ground to powder. And such types of madder, like Asian, also need to be fermented for about a year and only thentreat with chemicals of a certain composition. Sometimes dried raw materials are steamed with water, then dried, and the powder is precipitated with alkali on alum or substrates from certain types of clay. Tin mordant raw materials gave a fiery red color, with alumina (contains aluminum compounds) - bright red and pink shades.

Obtaining synthetic substitutes

Synthetic kraplak was first prepared in 1868 from aluminum-calcium lacquer - alizarin.

Today, kraplaki red, both light and dark, are in-demand synthetic paints. They are massively prepared on the basis of anthraquinone pigments, which are complex, intensely colored compounds, the color of which may vary depending on the composition of the compounds used (oxyanthraquinone and various precipitants).

Characteristic features of artistic paints

Characteristic features of kraplaks are as follows:

• these are highly translucent paints, as they are transparent or translucent and easily give unusual glaze light effects;
• the pasty application of kraplak does not make sense because of their transparency and fluidity;
• have a high hiding power, i.e., when applied evenly, they are able to overlap the color of the surface on which they were applied;
• marks are slow drying paints;
• adding lacquers or No. 1 or No. 2 condensed oil to them further enhances their brilliance.

Why you can't mix different paintswith each other

Paints are organic substances of rather complex chemical composition. When mixing paints, chemical reactions occur, as in their production, some chemicals pass into others. With a change in the composition, the color of the paints also changes. So that the work with paints does not lose color (and sometimes the structure, since the composition of the substrate is also a chemical compound), does not darken and does not become whitish immediately when mixing paints or over time, it is necessary to know the compatibility of individual paints. You can mix only well-defined colors, then the work will delight the viewer for a long time with the freshness of its bright saturated colors.

Compatibility of kraplak with other paints

There are many color compatibility charts on the Internet. However, kraplaks are very capricious in this regard. They do not like to mix with other colors, spoiling the color: other shades turn brown, gray or brighten.

Mixing kraplak with whitewash can be considered very unsuccessful: chrome, manganese or lead. A mixture of it with ultramarine and cob alt colors is also undesirable. Especially they should not be mixed with cob alt in a small ratio. So kraplak violet gives a lightening, whitish tone, if mixed with cob alt.

Unsuccessful and mixing manganese blue paint with specks: we get an unpleasant dirty blue color. When mixed with manganese cadmium, the composition reveals the blue pigment of manganese paint. Kraplak unpleasantly changes its tone when mixing itwith chromium oxide. Volkonskoit and earth green mixed with this paint can cause cracking, especially when applied thickly.

If you mix kraplaki with ultramarine, then the tone of the colors becomes brown. "Earth" paints are also not recommended to be mixed with them. It is especially not recommended to add other paints in small proportions to kraplaki.

Lightfastness

Kraplaki belong to medium-fast paints. But this is an average figure, because depending on the method of production, they can be significantly more lightfast.

However, the red kraplak is durable (it is darker) does not lose its brightness for a very long time, for which it is appreciated by artists.

Light fastness is one of the main requirements for paints and watercolors. And “Kraplak red light” from the set of watercolors “Leningrad” according to scale No. 313 is one of the most light-resistant paints - (three stars).