spqrblues: (Ave Sweetums)
SPQR Blues ([personal profile] spqrblues) wrote2017-03-13 08:30 pm
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Do Art Wrong: SPQR Blue

Lapis Lazuli swatches on the right, modern Ultramarine swatch on the left.(pic #1: Lapis Lazuli swatches on the right, modern Ultramarine swatch on the left.)

I've been playing with Lapis Lazuli blue in my ancient palette since I acquired a small amount of powdered pigment, supposedly from the same source the Romans (and later painters) used. It's not the super-expensive super-high quality called Fra Angelico Blue, but even a medium-nice grade can be 40 times the cost of, say, red ochre (which, to be fair, is basically dirt).


unsuccessful Egyptian Blue paint (over black ink). It's basically just sand barely adhered to the page.(pic #2: unsuccessful Egyptian Blue paint (over black ink). It's basically just sand barely adhered to the page.)

Maybe because of this, I was very careful when mixing my ten bucks worth of pigment into paint, and my first attempt turned out very well. Much more highly pigmented than, say, the Daniel Smith brand Lapis Lazuli Genuine watercolour. The picture (pic #1) doesn't fully do it justice. There's something about it that sets it apart from the modern synthetic version of Ultramarine (Lapis Lazuli was also originally called Ultramarine, "from across the sea," since the stones for it were imported). My Lapis Lazuli paint was much more successful than my attempts at getting Egyptian Frit Blue (considered the first synthetic pigment) to work in watercolour.


The darkest blue here is one layer of the concentrated version of the paint.(pic #3: The darkest blue here is one layer of the concentrated version of the paint.)

Over the weekend I took a few hours break from work to experiment with the Lapis Lazuli paint left in the mixing cup when I made the first small batch of paint. Waste not, want not--my initial intention was just to get the paint out of the cup to use. It's not quite the Fra Angelico extraction method, and I'm starting with a lower grade of pigment, but I was able to precipitate out different grades of pigment particles and get a more concentrated version in the paint binder.

I'm a novice at making paint, whether watercolour, tempera, or encaustic. Who knows whether I'm filtering out the impurities or just making a mess. But I like the result.
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[identity profile] palusbuteo.livejournal.com 2017-03-14 04:34 pm (UTC)(link)
That's cool about the glass muller alternative, nice find!

As for the Victorian assumptions, that thing about Lapis (or whatever blue was used that oxidized black, I could certainly be mis-remembering), the passage was what I had been told/read about back on college, many years ago, but for some reason that stuck with me....Considering how much "more" we know now as opposed to those "experts" only 100-200 years ago who made their sometimes outlandish "theories" stand out as indisputable fact, etc etc. If those earlier art historians only had X-Ray and Gamma-Ray tech to look deeper into the layers, they'd realize how off the mark they were. In a roundabout way, all of that "traditionalist" vs "modernism" attitude I find "hilarious" sometimes when I consider how much the Impressionists got shit-on by the art community for *daring* to use these new-fangled synthetic and metalic paints, that come in a metal TUBE no less! The Horror! Blasphemy! Sort of like that incident with Faust when he showed Gutenberg's books off and it was deemed "Witchcraft" because no way anyone could produce a book so quickly, and the dastardly trickery to make a book look like it was hand-scribed to fool people...*insert Monty Python Holy Grail "She's a witch" scene*

I think you might be right about the differences in how fine a powder - effect of the final product.....I seem to remember seeing something about that in one of the facsimile manuals I have.
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