There was a time when every painter grinded his pigments from minerals and earths and other elements, and it was a long and laborious process. This was before the invention of colors-in-tubes.
Azurite was the most popular blue pigment. It was made by grinding the mineral with the same name, which occurred in and around silver veins, on a porphyry slab with a muller and water, until it became a creamy paste. Then it was put in a little jar which was filled with water and covered. Azurite tended to deteriorate if ground too much. But often, the more a pigment was ground, the better the color it yielded.
Here’s what Cennino Cennini, who wrote The Craftsman Handbook around 1400, says:
‘Then put vermilion on the slab, and grind it with clear water as much as ever you can; for if you were to grind it every day for twenty years it would still be better and more perfect.’
When the time for painting came, the jar with azurite was fetched, and some of the soupy pigment was put again on the porphyry slab and and mixed with egg yolk, the binder that made it stick to the ground of the panel, and river water, and ground some more.
Good pigments were hard to find. Ultramarine, the bluest of blues, was the most precious. It was ground from lapis lazuli, which did not occur in Europe and was imported from the east.
Oliver Colors the Moonbeamed Painter, whose biography I am writing at present, and from whom I have learned all these things about colors, cannot afford ultramarine. Yet he is determined to procure it, for he is fond of colors, and wants to use the best ones for the masterpiece he is painting in his shadowy attic. Recently I heard him say something that startled me:
‘I shall go without eating today, and from now on I shall eat only every other day, to save money to buy ultramarine. In three years I will afford a pinch.’
*
In our time and age, making colors is no longer an art. Technology has taken care of that. Today the intrinsic value of the pigments no longer matters. The painting is judged based on the skill of the painter. This is why ultramarine has been substituted by cheaper alternatives made in labs.
Now there’s something I want to ask you, because soon I will join Oliver Colors in his shadowy attic again.
Do you think I should bring him a tube of that cheap ultramarine? Or should I encourage his dietary changes?
boy with a hat 
A true artist will never mind a dietary change for good pigments, like Vincent would never give up a good research for a story, but will give anything for a good one as he always do. I look forward to see the first ’50 shades of Ultramarine’…
Haha!
That’s a great title!
At least make him a sandwich to fuel his art.
He has his own philosophical way of eating. He’s so peculiar!
Much value is lost by the ease of which many matters are obtained these days. And, no longer realizing the value once placed on such things, society takes them for granted. And suffers.
Quite so! 🙂
The best orange pigments were made from uranium, back in the day. True dat,
Has Seb abandoned his lyrical harp for the acoustic guitar?
Is poetry dead in the USA?
Yes to both.
Now I understand why I haven’t seen Seb for so long in my reader…!
Do both. Art is not precious. Life is not precious. They each only exist and are not affected by rhetoric. It is so easy to bring each into the world. influence is impossible;only an illusion.
Cogito, ergo sum. No?
Est quod est,rather.
To bring it back to your question, you must feed a painting just as you must create an artist.
I like the romance of the dietary changes.. the artist suffering for his craft. But then, it does seem kinda mean…
Hold out for the real stuff! A man prepared to suffer for his art….
Let him live his dream… Sometimes the dream is sweeter than reality…
He’ll also have much more satisfaction and joy from it once he earns it by saving for it with such determination and sacrifice.
Great story, you do forgot how easy things are these days with mass production which I moan about but it really has helped accessibility immensely. Shame he has to go hungry though, take him some pie.
If you bake him some, I will, for I myself am unable to bake pie, and mother’s cooking is disastrous.
I think you are fond of cooking anyway, Mellie.
Ok I’ll bake a pie, I’ll bake two, so you can have one too.
Yes I am fond of cooking and hats.
I will bake 2 pies, so you can both have one each. I am fond of cooking and hats
Kind of you!
But please, do put sugar! Sugar mars the tooth.
Sometimes, you’ve got to suffer for your art! 🙂 Oliver sounds like an interesting character indeed!
He’s so peculiar!
Wait until you meet him.
Take a tube. To use paint with abandon is much better than to use so sparingly you become anal.
Value exists in much that is crafted by hand, for if one has the patience, there is much to learn from, within all aspects, from beginning to end, much to experiment with beyond that of factory, and it’s productions.