Originally posted by Wendy@May 15 2006, 12:33 AM
Also, would anyone know if red, green, and blue vegetable dyes would have been available in the same geographical area?
Hi Wendy, yes, all of these colours were available in Scotland. If they didn't grow locally they would have been available via trade from other parts of Britain or continental Europe. What date this is could determine the quality of each colour.
The established method for painting tartans is to start with what you determine is the base colour and add the stripes in layers. The width of the main stripes (if there are any) might mean that they're actually the dominant colour, but personally I think it's easier to paint as though you were building up from a base colour of cloth as it seems most logical. So if we imagine painting a simple one, Black Watch, to illustrate:
You'd start with the medium blue, add the wide dark-blue stripes, leaving small squares of blue visible (if you started with the darker blue you'd have to paint the mid-blue squares on top, placing them accurately and making them square is tricky).
Where the dark stripes overlap you then paint black squares followed by the darker green down the centre of each dark-blue stripe, with a mid-green square where they overlap. Then add the thin dark stripes, followed by small dots of black where these cross; notice they're actually different colours where they overlap the green and blue but in miniature you can use just a single colour and get away with it.
Here's a detail pic of MacKenzie (which is basically Black Watch, plus red and white) to show the actual mixing of colours from the warp and weft:
See there is only white and red where the same colour threads overlap in both directions? That's the basic principle with plaid.
Now if you want to add highlighting and shading in addition to the pattern that adds another level of complexity and for smaller scales (around 1/32 and smaller) shadows alone are often all that are done.
Einion
