My Fra Angelico Blue. The finest Lapis Lazuli pigment to watercolor paint.
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- čas přidán 29. 08. 2022
- Fra Angelico Blue. The commercial name for the purest form of natural PB29, Lapis Lazuli.
Lapis Lazuli is a mineral that consists mostly out of Lazurite, Calcite, Sodalite and Pyrite. To get the blue out of this mineral (coming from Lazurite) one needs to purify it.
This video shows the entire process of what makes this the most artisanal paint I’ve ever made. I already make my own binder since day one, and I print my own pans with recycled PLA.. but I’ve never ground and purified a pigment before.
I’ve done this the Ceninni way.
Cennino Cennini was an Italian medieval artist. He was the first to record, in a very detailed way, all the artisanal and artistic skills and methods from that time. A books named Il Libro dell’Arte. He wasn’t the one who invented purifying Lapis in such manner, but he did give us a step by step guide to follow.
So I bought the book and followed his steps with the materials we now have, though I needed some things I didn’t have yet; bees wax, pine rosin, gum mastic, potash and most importantly, a big chuck of Lapis Lazuli.
First I needed to smash and grind the Lapis mineral into a fine powder. As you can see in the video, this took some steps and quite some work to get me enough of it.
Once I had the powder (this isn’t pigment yet) I weighed and melted the ingredients. Once melted I mixed the hot liquid with the Lapis powder, forming a paste. After cooling down a bit, I kneaded and rolled this paste into a stick.
If all the lapis powder was thoroughly mixed throughout the stick, the purifying process could begin. You need to let the stick soften again in hot water mixed with potash. In that water, I slowly started to knead, stretch and fold the stick. The longer I kept doing that, the more blue the water became.
This is what it’s all about, once the blue water settled, the residue at the bottom of the bowl is the blue gold I was after!
Draining it carefully and pouring it into jars, I let it settle for a longer time. Making sure I didn’t lose any of the precious blue dust I would need to make paint. After pouring this through a filter, I let the filter dry.
I scraped off the pigment, mulling it carefully with water. This is to make sure the particles aren’t mulled too fine. The finer the pigment, the less blue it will be.
The one thing that was left to do after this, was to mix it with my binder (Gum Arabic, Honey and Glycerine in water) and pour it into pans.
I hoped you liked seeing this process from start to finish, with all the things that come with making handmade watercolors!
Because of the labor, I won’t be making this very often. But I did enjoy the process, following steps that were written down hundreds of years ago.
The pigment you see in the video isn’t the only Fra Angelico Blue I have, but I don’t have a lot.
These will be open for pre-order soon. Though they will be pricey..
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Wow. Your video making and story telling skills have much improved since you made this back in 08/2022. Large cheer for Laurens.
Thank yo uso much! :D
This is the only color I've seen you grind down the stone for, and make the binder too; it's really just so cool watching the process. This color is beautiful and probably quite out of my range as a novice!
Thank you for sharing these videos, and all the little techniques you share as well! Here and on reddit, I really enjoy your content 🙏🏻
Really appreciate it! :)
Awesome job! Love your work and passion, Laurens.
Thank you so much Heidi! Good to hear :D
Great video. Thank you for sharing such a complex process with us.
My absolute pleasure!
Awesome... so much effort poured in!
Thank you for noticing 🙏☺️
Blue is my favourite colour´and this is just gorgeous.
Thank you so much! It’s my favorite too, this is a very special one to make 💙
That came out beautiful! I am so curious about your process. I know every paint maker has their secrets though hehe. Good job!
Thank you so much! Basically my full process in in the description ;) But the quantities... that's the trade secret. That and working with knowledge and passion!
I am SCREAMING 💙
I guess that's a good thing? 😅
Compliments! Well worth the color and saturation>
Thank you so much! I need to make a new batch. I’ll probably make a new video on it too 🙏
I want to make this, you have the only good video for high quality handmade lapis lazuli I've seen! Will you ever do a more detailed guide? If you're interested I'd love to know your process in more detail and write it down.
Thank you so much!! Yes I want to redo it in a proper horizontal format! 🙏
May I ask where you buy the high quality lapis?@@dirtyblueshop
This I still had from an old collection as a kid!
Some captions and widescreen would be lovely, but very interesting nonetheless :)
In the next version!
Thank you very much for the reply. Something must be wrong with my resins. It would be really helpful if you could tell me which one exactly you are using.
I actually had most of it from old art supplies I bought from a fellow artist. The beeswax was just from a local store
Did you extracted it in the potash with your bare hands? I am studying the recipe and some people recomend at least a 13pH solution... Did you make your own potash or did you use pure potassium hydroxide diluted in water?
It’s store bought and I used just a tiny bit in distilled water
This is a great video. I tried that myself, but it didn't work. My pine rosin, beeswax and gum mastic mixture didn't melt in the water bath so I had to put it directly on the hot plate and unfortunately when I added the lapis lazuli powder it turned green. Do you have a tip or an idea what's going wrong?
Did you use all the right resins? I know synthetic ultramarine can turn greenish yellow when combined with an acid.. otherwise I can’t think of anything. Unless it was Azurite instead of lapis 🧐
Where did you find that copper pestle and mortar?
At the thrift shop 🤙
@@dirtyblueshop Thanks! Very cool find 😃
Ooooo I understood nothing (please don't explain, I like the mystery) but it was mesmerizing
😅🙏
Wtf is that goo in the jar near the beginning?
It’s gum Arabic, the full process is in the caption below the video!
I am sorry to say that.. but i much prefer the ones without voiceover 😂
That’s very okay! 😅
Can you slow down with the pictures you going to fast not able to see anything
Sure! I’ll reshoot the video in the summer so I’ll take that with me
I got $5.
Good for you!
I'm tired watching you do that let alone You actually doing all that work, but I get it is for the love of pigment after all right?!
Plus, it gives me the most beautiful Lapis Pigment I know is the real deal! :D