Contextual analysis

A Meditation on the colour Blue

During our methods and materials classes, we are always reminded of the cultural or historical significance of the materials that we use in our practices. Paints, oils, pigments… all are readily accessible to us today - the only real limitation being that of their price. But where do these materials come from? Who makes them? and how? A recurring theme in my practice is the necessity to have control. It thus seems nonsensical to not ask myself these questions. What does it mean to buy cheap oil paint from an art shop chain, as opposed to making my own? What story does acrylic Gesso tell?

At what point does progress overtake a material’s ‘narration’, or the story it tells? Should I even be putting this into question? I’m lucky that I have access to such a wide range of somewhat affordable pigments today- and that I don’t have to grind up Egyptian mummies to obtain a certain shade of brown (Finlay, 2002). Why should I ask myself these questions?

Extracting pigments & Natural Pigments

When I first started getting interested in pigments, it was mostly through the promise of cost-efficiency: a 50g pot of ultramarine blue from Ap Fitzpatrick costs £2.70, whereas a tube of oil paint can sometimes cost 12 pounds for a 200ml tube, if not more. I attended an oil paint making workshop, and realised that, while the £2.70 was a very alluring price, it dit not take into account the amount of time and effort spent mulling the paint. But this was what I was looking for, this is what I wanted: to understand and control the materials I used. But I wondered: could I push this further? Where did these pigments come from? Who mines them? And most of all, can I make my own?

I remembered making dye out of an avocado pit. The process was easy: I had to chop it into pieces, and boil it for a few hours. Resulted a deep, dark crimson. But what I wanted wasn’t a dye, it was a pigment that I could turn into a paint. The answer was lake pigments. I attended another workshop, trying to understand this process better. We were taught that “(…) a traditional lake pigment has two constituents: the dyestuff and the substrate (…). Without this, the dyestuff has no ‘body’, no substance; it cannot be used in the conventional way, mixed in the binding medium like the other, solid pigments. The dye provides the colour while the substrate provides other, essential properties of the pigment, such as translucency.” (Kirby et al., 2014, p.69) This meant that simply boiling the element we wanted to extract the pigment from was not enough, the paint would flake off and disappear once it dried. “Lake pigments require a dye, a mordant, and an alkali, to precipitate the colorant molecule onto an insoluble carrier”. (Stopka, 2023)

The process in itself is straight-forward once you have collected all the necessary ingredients and understand how time-consuming it truly is. Once I had worked through the entire process, which took more than a week, I was left with a very translucid, and slightly disappointing colour. I had chosen to use Urvi’s grandmother’s spice mix during this workshop, instead of the camomile that had been offered. Perhaps this had something to do with the lacklustre result.

(To the left) Personal notes, Ingredients and recipe to extracting natural pigments from dry plant dye material
(To the right) Dried and extracted pigment, before being ground into a powder.

Laking pigment is a tedious process, maybe something I don’t have time to be spending on during this MA course. I decided that, while I would continue to explore the materials I use in the future, I needed to take a break in order to focus on the other aspects of my work. I planted woad and Japanese indigo seeds. Once they mature I plan to experiment extracting their pigment, or to make a dye.

A ‘brief’ history of Blue pigment

Yet, temporarily putting the process of laking aside did not quench my thirst for pigments. Lately, I have been predominantly using the colour blue in my work. Initially, I wanted to underline the orientalist gaze and racism that my grandmother was subject to, growing up mixed race in post-war France. The blue tones I used to paint her skin were a reference to traditional asian ceramics, which predominantly used blue glazes in their designs. I encountered some of these at ‘The Great Mughals: Art, architecture, and opulence’ exhibition, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as insight on the use of blue within Mughal empire art. “One of the hallmarks of Mughal paintings is the purity and the clarity of the colours (…) The richly detailed, vibrant paintings and illustrated manuscripts, such as the Hamzanama, Akbarnama and Jahangirnama (…) .” (Chowdry, 2025) These striking blue pigments were extracted from malachite and Lapis Lazuli. The stones were ground, laked and then mulled with a mixture of a gum arabic binder and milk or honey. To counter the paint’s lack of response to being laid in an even, flat layer, the artist would burnish each of them with an agate. This process embedded the particles of colour into the surface, retaining their crispness, even centuries later. “I think it’s worth going through the pains of trying to understand the pains at which the original masters worked. It widens and deepens our understanding of the art form, and answers a lot of questions about why things were painted in the way they were.” (Chowdry, 2025)

“Early mankind had no access to blue because blue is not what you call an Earth colour, you don’t find it in the soil” (Berke, 2002)

I remember walking into Queen Nefertari’s tomb in the Valley of the Kings, in Luxor, Egypt. The ceiling was adorned with golden stars, and the walls with images of Nefertari being welcomed by a plethora of gods, performing ceremonies and tests from the Book of the Dead. (Watson, 2022) But what struck me was how vibrant the blues were, even centuries after their application onto the grave’s stoney walls and ceilings. Egyptian blue pigment is applied over a layer of black paint, creating a dark blue colour. Areas where this glassy-appearing pigment is applied over white paint results in a lighter blue. (Rickerby, p49-50) This tomb was built around 1250 BC, more than 3200 years ago- approximately 3667 years before the Mughal Empire came to be (in 1526 AD). It’s fascinating to think about the fact that more than 36 centuries before crushing and laking lapis lazuli and malachite, humans were already extracting pigments from these very stones.

2a. Synthetic pigments, and the lost Egyptian Blue recipe

“In ancient egypt, pigments for painting and ceramics were ground from precious minerals such as azurite and lapis lazuli; indigo, a textile dye now famous for its use in colouring jeans, was extracted from plants. However, all the above-mentioned colourants presented issues which limited their use. Azurite pigment is unstable in air and would eventually be transformed into its green counterpart, malachite. Lapis lazuli had to be imported from north-east Afghanistan (still the major source of the precious stone) and the extraction process would produce only small amounts of the purest colourant powder called ultramarine. Finally, indigo dyes can fade quickly when exposed to sunlight.” (Corcoran, 2016, p59-82) This led to the creation of Egyptian blue, the first known synthetic pigment (circa 3250 BC). While “the exact method of manufacture has been lost since the fall of the Roman Empire – we now know that it was made by heating a mixture of quartz sand, a copper compound, calcium carbonate and a small amount of an alkali such as natron, to temperatures over 800°C.” (Pokorska, 2018).

2b. Replacing Egyptian Blue: Ultramarine and Prussian Blue

Egyptian Blue was used, through varied recipes, throughout the Mesopotamian, Persian, Greek and Roman empires, who built factories devoted to blue’s production. And all the way in china, “chemists created blue pigments by blending copper with heavy elements like barium, lead and mercury.” (Berke, 2002)

But once Egyptian Blue was lost, artists and artisans turned back to the most stable colour around: ultramarine. Venice’s trading connections with Constantinople led the colour to travel across the sea, to Europe (thus the name, ultramarine, which translates to ’beyond the sea’). Renaissance artists coveted the semi-precious lapis lazuli stones, the high price of their import from Afghanistan made them costly, precious and scarce. Blue became more expensive than gold, and was “often reserved (…) for (…) most spiritually significant people, places or stories, lending it an aura of enigmatic, elusive magic.” (Lesso, 2020) Rich Patrons, such as the Medici family, would purchase the pigment for artists (who could not afford it), as having ultramarine in paintings was both a sign of wealth and power.

In 1665, Johannes Vermeer discovered that adding a hint of ultramarine to grey shades could evoke the illusion of daylight, which allowed him to paint atmospheric, half-lit interiors. Yet his generous use of ultramarine almost drove his family into bankruptcy. A few years later, in Berlin, around 1704, Johann Jacob Diesbach would accidentally discover a new synthetic pigment, which we now know as Prussian blue. The story goes as follows: Diesbach was making what he thought was cochineal red lake paint. This recipe included iron sulphate and potash, the latter which he purchased from his colleague, Johann Konrad Dippel. He was surprised to find a deep blue paint instead of the red he was expecting. Upon further investigation, he realised that the potash he had bought from Dippel (who was known for creating a miracle cure-all oil, made by boiling different animal parts), was contaminated with animal blood. The iron from the blood reacted with the other ingredients, causing a chemical reaction and creating a blue compound: iron ferrocyanide. Almost a century later, in 1790, Dutch traders imported the pigment to Japan. It gained popularity amongst Japanese woodblock printing artists. Hokusai Katsushika’s ‘36 Views of Mount Fuji’ series is an example of the use of this pigment.

Egyptian blue, on the other hand, was rediscovered in the 19th century. Today, it is a readily available pigment which has many (surprising) applications outside of art, including: “biomedical analysis, telecommunications and (my personal favourite) security and crime detection.” (Pokorska, 2018)

2c. Mayan Blue

On the other side of the world, possibly as early as 600BC, evidence of the use of blue was discovered in the ancient Mayan city of Chichén Itzá. The method of producing this pigment, dubbed “Mayan Blue”, is still considered to be rather mysterious. It involved boiling indigo with palygorskite (a fibrous clay material), which bonds the two materials together at a molecular level (as opposed to just dying the exterior of the clay), and leads to the creation of a very stable and durable pigment.

In 2018, a BBC article hinted towards the fact that “during colonisation Maya blue was exploited along with everything else that had belonged to the people of the New World”. (Van Houten Maldonado, 2018) Yet, this was never proven, and it is more likely that artists such as José Juárez, Cristóbal de Villalpando and Baltasar de Echave Ibia, while almost certainly unable to afford ultramarine, would have used azurite.

Although Maya Blue didn’t seem to gain popularity among colonial, baroque artists, another local pigment, Indigo, did.

2d. Indigo and the colonial slave trade

The genus ‘Indigofera’ comprises more than 750 species of plants. These have been a natural source of blue dye for humanity since prehistoric times, its earliest recorded use dating back to Huaca Prieta, Peru, one of the first human settlements in the Americas (some 6000 years ago). During the Greaco-Roman period, Indigo was imported from India to the Mediterranean by Arab merchants. (St.Claire, 2017) Long before European colonisation, indigo-bearing plants were cultivated in most countries in SouthEast Asia.

In the Americas, indigo was valued for its use in the art, textile and medical industries. When the Conquistadors arrived, “they saw its large-scale production as a commercial opportunity to displace Portugal’s role in the indigo trade into Europe from the East.” (Rembert, D. H., 1979, p129.) By the 18th century, the Spanish had established major indigo plantations in Guatemala, Venezuela and Mexico, while the French and the English expanded indigo cultivation to the Caribbean. “(…) European settlers relied heavily on the enslaved labor of African and Indigenous peoples, who’s knowledge of indigo cultivation and processing was instrumental to developing it as a cash crop.” (Jha, 2023)

Following the retreat of the British from American colonies, their interest shifted to India, seeing the country as “(…) another endless source of cheap labor and commodities.” (Ray, 2022, p181). The English East India Company enforced exploitative systems, binding farmers into unfair contracts which forbade them from growing other types of crops. This led to widespread resistance, culminating in the 1859 non-violent ‘Indigo Revolt’ in Bengal. Despite this revolt, indigo continued to play a significant role in colonial economies, until the creation of synthetic indigo, in Germany.

Why Blue? Situating the pigment into my practice.

During a one-on-one tutorial with Anna bunting-Branch, we discussed the potential necessity of building narratives between works. I wondered if part of this could be my use of the colour blue. Giving my work the possibility to become more ‘loose’, giving the material the freedom to speak for itself.

I subsequently visited the AP Fitzpatrick shop in Bethnal Green. In the space of two hours, I learned more about pigments and paint than I had in my 25 years on Earth. My initial plan had been to buy lapis lazuli pigment, I had been enchanted by its history and dreamt of cementing my work into the long line of artists that had come before me. Yet I hadn’t done much research on the actual, physical application of the pigment, as a paint. It hadn’t occurred to me to link what I had learned about the techniques artists during the Mughal empire used to imbed the blue into their surfaces, to my own practice. While Lapis Lazuli pigment is more accessible today, it remains a complex and fickle material to use. It has to be applied in very fine, almost transparent layers, sometimes working with indigo to darken certain areas, and rarely looks as striking as you would expect it to if not applied in the right manner.

I was told to save my money (and my almost-certain disappointment) and pivot towards alternatives: 1000 Smalt Blue (which is composed of Cobalt Potassium Silicate Glass and results in an almost transparent paint which can also be used as a glaze or underglaze, but not with oil), 45000 Ultramarine Blue Extra Dark and 45080 Ultramarine Blue Light (Both synthetic ultramarine pigments).

At this point, I was hit with a second dilemma: painting with oil. In order to obtain oil paint, one has to mull the pigment with oil: however refined it may be, oil is yellow. Mixing yellow and blue will always result in a green. I had been under the impression that using light oils, such as poppy seed oil, or safflower oil would slow this reaction down.

It was suggested I pivot to using acrylic medium. I feel hesitant about this change, I’ve never been a fan of working with acrylic. Additionally, while I understand basic colour theory, I can’t help feeling sceptical: hasn’t humanity painted with oils and blues since the dawn of time? Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato’s ‘The Virgin in Prayer’, or Johannes Vermeer’s ‘The Girl with a Pearl Earring’ are both oil paintings, their most striking features being the ultramarine blue used. While both paintings have undergone countless hours of restoration work, they are both almost 400 years old, and very much still… blue!

I still bought the Smalt blue pigment, which cannot be used with oil, and decided I would give acrylic a chance. As the employee at AP Fitzpatrick put it: “Most people aren’t looking at the history of the pigments you’re using. There’s no point in spending hundreds of pounds on lapis lazuli if you’re going to paint a boring painting.”

Own work, detail of the ultramrine blue pigment drying

Making ultramarine blue oil paint with a muller

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