Color (oil on canvas)
In today's world, we are able to walk into a store and choose from a huge array of beautiful colors. But where do they come from? Though I've always known the world is full of color, it suddenly seemed wondrous to me that there are likely even more colors in all their variations and shades and hues in nature than an entire collection of paints in the largest art store.
Today, due to synthetic formulations of paints, colors are easily available. Historically, it was much harder to find certain colors. For example, blue was made by crushing the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli into powder, then mixing with oil medium. This made the color hard to find and very expensive. So in old paintings, very little blue is seen, and even when it was used, it was carefully and sparingly applied. Bright red similarly was hard to come by once upon a time, as it was made by crushing small bugs found only in South Asia, and yellow came from the dried urine of cows fed only mango leaves. (gross! 🙈😅) Earth colors and ochers, made from natural minerals found in sand, clay, and iron oxide, found abundantly in nature were used since the time of pre-historic paintings and sketches found in ancient caves.
History gives us a better perspective by which to appreciate art. For example, hints of blue in olden paintings speak not just of the color, but the passion of the artist to procure such rare colors for his art.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigment
Thanks for reading! :)
