Played on the original period instruments

Is there a visual equivalent to music "played on the original period instruments"? Maybe: What about paintings or drawings created with media handmade by the artist rather than purchased? Some artists still roll their own -- grind their own pigments, make their own paper, for example.

When I recently liberated some bedraggled bamboo in our new back yard, I was reminded of JT's and my experiments in creating Original Period Media. My experiment, which the bamboo recalled, was modest and unsuccessful:-- cutting quill pens from goose feathers. Despite an art book's simple and explicit instructions for slicing a small curved niche, then adding a tiny line and hole to collect the ink, the quills produced a sloppy line. No one would want to sign the Declaration of Independence with these babies!

JT's experiments were much more successful, and I still have the results. One summer years ago, working from the same art book instructions, he made me a lifetime supply of drawing charcoal.


The process involves cutting twigs to fit inside nested and ventilated tin cans, then positioning them in an open fire where they'll get enough heat to carbonize but not so much that they burn up. I was pleased with the first batch so he made several more, sampling six different kinds of plants and trees at our cabin. Here's my boxed stash:--


Setting up my new studio this summer, I had fun reacquainting myself with how each of these handled. Willow seems most congenial -- although "cooking time" as much as raw material is an important variable in producing a stick that's soft but not too soft. However messy charcoal can be, I still love to plunge into a charcoal drawing now and then, as I did the year he made the big supply, drawing the evocative lights and shadows on the road at the gate to our cabin.


Another of his experiments, ideally suited to cabin life, was producing a few small jars of bistre -- the brown-toned ink familiar to Renaissance artists. It's like a tea boiled down from the carbon that collects inside a wood stove. My art book advised mixing the finished product with gum arabic as a binder/thickener, something that's done with commercial watercolor paints. I think I'll give bistre drawings a try again, too -- another adventure in my new studio quarters.


Based on my failed quill pens, I won't waste time trying to cut a bamboo pen -- despite the inspirational model of Van Gogh's reed pen drawings. What's more, I know I could never match the ingenious version -- definitely an original instrument -- readily available in Vancouver's Chinatown.