Color Notes – Lapis Lazuli

Have I mentioned I recently started making my paints? It’s a slow meditative process, and I am developing a sensitivity to the personality of each pigment and learning their fascinating histories. Especially after writing what I did above about the powerful combination of learning information and experiential knowledge at Newberry Volcano, essentially the way I move through life whenever possible, I am flabbergasted that it has taken me this long to make my paint. Now that I have started, I don’t want to use manufactured paint anymore. It’s all so homogenous and lacking personality.

Blues are a curious family of pigments. They are tricky to procure naturally because the earth doesn’t tend to make a lot of things that are blue. Most blue things aren’t actually blue, like the sky, or the wings of a blue morpho butterfly. The blue sky is refracted light scatted by water particles. The blue morpho’s wings are similar.

But, the earth has produced a stunning blue stone called lapis lazuli meaning…blue stone. It is brilliant blue interlaced with gold and white streaks. Because it is so stunning, once it was unearthed people have wanted to beautify their world with it. The earliest found artifacts with lapis lazuli date back to around 7570 BCE. The stone made its way to Europe from the mountains of Afghanistan, probably along the Silk Road, and gained the moniker ultramarine – beyond the sea. This blue was so prized in Europe that it was more valuable than gold.

Artists coveted the blue pigment, but they needed to use it strategically because of its cost. The price of a paintings was negotiated partly on the amount of blue that the patron wanted and could afford. Often ultramarine was saved for vital areas of the painting, like the garments of the Virgin Mary, signifying her connection to the heavens and her queenly esteem.

That’s a lot of historical weight to attribute to a pigment. My little container of it held only 10g of beautiful powdered blue and it cost me a smidge over $30. It made very little oil paint once I ground it. My small tube of paint made me acutely aware of how expensive it was to use. I overthought what areas of the painting deserved its presence too much because I felt obligated to give it the highest level of chromatic consideration and thus, didn’t use it.

Finally I just had to do something with it. I decided to use it as a pure glaze as to not degrade it with another pigment (very Aristotelian and Pliny the Elder of me – the pigment purists that they were. Both felt that mixing any mixing of pigments created severely inferior colors and mixing should never be done). The blue paint that lapis lazuli makes is gorgeous. Synthetic ultramarine blue is always too saturated for my liking, and I always tone it down with dabs of burnt umber. But lapis lazuli is just the right hue, simultaneously smoky and brilliant. It glints with remnants of the gold pyrite that streaks through the stone. It really is a magnificent and complex pigment.

I used it in transparent glazes in Ode to the Eddy Muffin IV: Eddy at the Gun Club but its use is diffuse and undefined. I didn’t have a contained dedicated shape, like Mary’s robes to place it and let it shine in all its glory. It mingles with synthetic ultramarine. I get the appeal of this pigment. As much as I would love to include it in my regular palette, that just isn’t going to be feasible anytime soon. In the meantime, I covet the few specks of pigment that are still in the container it came in and the small lump of paint I have left in the tube, teasing me to use it in a future painting. But next time, I will need to find my own equivalent of Mary’s robes to do it justice.