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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