On the lighter side of things I have found myself in blue mood. I’m not sad, shaken, or depressed but my painting has been dealing with a phase in using a certain blue hue. You would think with my ‘by the sea’ style of scenes that I would use a marine blue, a Prussian blue, and maybe a cobalt blue( just laying some artsy color terms on you). What I’ve been using is a blue called phthalocyanine blue.

PHTHALOCYANINE BLUE, also known as monastral blue, is a copper organic blue dyestuff that was developed by chemists under the trade name, "monastral blue" pigment in London, November 1935, claiming that it was the most important blue discovery since Prussian blue in 1704, and artificial ultramarine, in 1824, and was a superior pigment to both. Supposedly it is a very pure blue for it absorbs light almost completely except for the green and blue bands.

I have found that it comes across with a richness in tone and brings a visual fullness when I’m painting the background or sky in the scene, It also mixes well with the other colors that I use regularly, like burnt sienna, pure white, and paynes gray. When I layer colors over top a great depth shows through because of how beautiful this blue is, well, blue.

I have used the phthalocyanine blue in all of the latest paintings of my Flower Song series. The pictures you see are from the final five paintings in the series and will be available by the end of September. So if in the future you here that an artist is in blue mood, it might not be a bad thing. It could just be that he has cracked open a different tube of blue.

Blessings

By My Own Hands

In a Phthalocyanine Blue Mood