MELANCHOLIC

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MELANCHOLIC

Postby Dr. Goodword » Fri Mar 21, 2008 12:00 am

• melancholic •

Pronunciation: me-lên-kah-likHear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Sad, gloomy, mournful. 2. Quiet and contemplative, meditative, absorbed in thought.

Notes: Today's Good Word emerged from the fourth and final of the ancient humors: the imagined black bile. This humor was associated with autumn and the earth, of the four ancient elements, earth, air, fire, and water. It is an adjective from an adjective, for the noun melancholy, on which melancholic is based, may also be used as an adjective, as to receive a melancholy letter from home. Obversely, melancholic may be used as a noun as well as an adjective, as an inveterate melancholic who seldom leaves the house. Melancholically is the appropriate adverb for today's adjective.

In Play: Melancholy refers to a gentle sadness, an almost fuzzy sorrowfulness: "The poor performance of the stock market recently has made many retirees a bit melancholic (or melancholy), to say the least." However, someone who is given to day-dreaming or more to thinking than to acting may also be described by today's word: "Dennis Schuh has been in melancholic reverie since his basketball team won the state championship."

Word History: Today's Good Word wended its way to English via the usual routes from ancient Greek, where it originated as Greek melankholia. This compound comprises melas, melanos "black" + khole "bile". The name of the dark pigment in human skin is melanin, a word based on the same Greek source. Yesterday we discussed khole, so let's examine melas "black" a bit more closely today. The root of this word, mel-, goes back to a Proto-Indo-European root, which originally referred to darkness or dirtiness. Sanskrit mlana- referred to black or a dark color and in Lithuanian we find the same root in melynas "blue". Russian malina means "raspberry", and apparently is based on the same root. In the Germanic languages we see it in old Gothic meljan "to write", but that word apparently did not spread beyond Gothic.
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Postby gailr » Fri Mar 21, 2008 9:52 pm

Albrecht Dürer: Melancolia I
Melencolia I is a depiction of the intellectual situation of the artist and is thus, by extension, a spiritual self-portrait of Dürer. In medieval philosophy, each individual was thought to be dominated by one of the four humors; melancholy, associated with black gall, was the least desirable of the four, and melancholics were considered most likely to succumb to insanity. Renaissance thought, however, also linked melancholy with creative genius; thus, at the same time that this idea changed the status of this humor, it made the self-conscious artist aware of the terrible risks that came with his gift.

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Postby Perry » Sat Mar 22, 2008 6:52 pm

Man could he ever etch!
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
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Postby Stargzer » Sat Mar 22, 2008 11:00 pm

Man could he ever etch!
To be picky about it, he engraved. At least, the picture in Gailr's link is listed as an engraving.

Etching involves coating a plate with ballground (a wax), removing the wax with a sharp-pointed tool called a burin to draw the picture, then immersing the plate into an acid bath to etch the exposed metal, leaving the parts coated with wax untouched. Another technique to get a stippled effect is to dust an area with powdered rosin and heat the plate until the rosin melts, forming little dots of solid rosin as a resist. The rest of the plate is coated with ballground and then etched in an acid bath. After etching the ballground and rosin are removed with a solvent such as paint thinner.

Engraving uses any of several types of burin to remove metal from the plate by scratching or gouging. Another tool has a small toothed wheel to achieve a pattern of dots.

Both etchings and engravings are printed the same way.

Ink is rolled out onto a flat surface with a soft rubber brayer and the brayer is used to ink the plate. Crinoline (tarlatan) is then used to remove the ink from the surface of the plate, leaving ink in the etched or engraved pattern. Sometimes one must lightly rub the edge of one's hand over the plate to remove any ink the crinoline didn't remove.

The plate is placed face up on the bed of the printing press. Paper that has been soaked in water to soften it and then dried between two pieces of blotte paper is placed over the plate and several thick pieces of felt are place over the paper. The plate, paper, and felt are run through the press, which press the felt onto the paper which in turn is pressed into the etched or engraved voids on the plate to pick up the ink.

The inking process is repeated to make another print.

Etching that used a burin to draw the lines and rosin for the stippled shadow, circa 1972.

Stargzer took drawing and printmaking classes in college; he was better at drawing than printmaking, probably because making prints involves looking at the world ass-backwards.
Regards//Larry

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Postby gailr » Sun Mar 23, 2008 12:35 am

My friends and I titled our etching/engraving efforts in Printmaking as "[Title] with Snags", the snags being little overshoots with the burin past the intended stopping point. (One of my pieces in particular was quite fetchingly 'fringed' all around. I think I got a pity 'B'.)

It gave me a whole new appreciation for people who did this as a living: engraving not only their own work (for which they might well have cut themselves some slack) but the drawings and paintings of others, to be approved by a critical eye before the plates appeared in print.

It's enough to make one melancholy.

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Postby Perry » Sun Mar 23, 2008 6:58 pm

As a former artist and art student (back in the 70s), my cheeks are burin with shame. How could I have committed such a faux pas? :oops:
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
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Postby Stargzer » Sun Mar 23, 2008 9:14 pm

I guess the desert burined it out of your mind ...
Regards//Larry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee


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