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Meet Sepia, An Unsung Pigment for Painting
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Sepia isn’t a colour that has a lot of star power. No wonder! It was named after the sepia cuttlefish, which is where sepia gets its pigment. These small cephalopods, related to their much larger cousins, the octopus and the squid, store ink in sacs situated between their gills. When under attack, they release…
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Painting the Blues
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Next time you run out of ultramarine blue, remind yourself that there was a time when the ultramarine blue pigment was so expensive, no one could afford to buy too much of it! Johannes Vermeer, for instance, used so much ultramarine to paint Girl with a Pear Earring that he put his family into…