Ultramarine blue is one of those amazing electric colors that you want to fall into. I first fell in love with the crayola color, then Golden Acrylic’s Ultramarine Blue Deep Hue. It was my go-to blue!
Ultramarine blue was originally made from lapis lazuli, which contains rivers of pyrite (I grew up calling that “fool’s gold.”) It was finely ground into oil and used by Renaissance artists, especially in their depictions of the Virgin Mary’s gowns. lapis became the catch word associated with the color, and the names in various languages are azure, azur, and azul, to name a few.
Gamblin Oils are my go-to oils; Gamblin’s Ultramarine blue is shown right. “Blue is the most commonly confused color in terms of its hue temperature. There is a widely held misconception that all blues are cool. This is not at all the case: Prussian, Cobalt, and Phthalo Blue, for example, are warm, and Ultramarine Blue is so warm that it’s almost purple.” (Gamblin’s comments on his Blues page.) Robert Gamblin discusses his early trials with making oils as the masters may have made them; he tried lapis along with many other minerals.
Daniel Smith makes a French Ultramarine Watercolor, but he is also making Genuine Lapis Lazuli Watercolor in their Primatek Line, shown below. I am dying to try some — I love the granular effect of the ground mineral line!
Below, a very cool video of the making of Genuine Lapis Lazuli Watercolor : The Art of Making Watercolor!
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Thanks to Wikipedia for the Lapis image.
“SERIOUSLY, you can’t take a break and give me my mid-morning morsel?”
I first encountered them in Golden Acrylics. They became a staple in glazes and undercoatings and all Tuscany colors, as in one of my horses, above, because I fell head over heels in love with 
I have couple of favorite line patterns I use in doodling, and sometimes as backgrounds in painting. My all time favorite, and a comfort to draw, is the architectural symbol for ground. I used it above to cover a background in acrylic, and right, as a decorative line in graphite.
There are other journals I use. Sometimes I like long shapes, and so have two longer format journals I use when it suites the subject:
Hematite is a form of iron oxide, a mineral that contributes to several different paint colors. It has an undertone of reddish brown, which when placed in a glaze gives it a shimmering red cast. In its natural form is is quite heavy, and is called the Shaman Stone by Native Americans. It is believed to have the power to attract, as in a magnet. The Greek word for blood, as in blood red, gives us its name αἷμα (haima.)
I had no idea what granulating paint was until I began using watercolors. And you have to know or you get wonky things happening that you didn’t want, like the funny paint around Frank’s nose, below. Notice how most of the colors are smooth, but there is this odd granulation around his nose? I should have used Lamp Black or Ivory black, but I used a granulating black, and it left that odd texture.
D.Katie Powell Art 