A J Ludlow Cerulean Blue Professional Watercolour

Cerulean Blue is just one of the bright and exquisite Professional Watercolours from A J Ludlow. Being based on a single pigment with excellent permanence and light fastness, ensures that this watercolour’s properties are exceptional. As with all our fine-art materials, Cerulean Blue watercolour is lovingly handmade in the UK by a skilled artisan from the best ingredients and finest pigments.

Cerulean Blue professional quality watercolour is supplied in a 15ml glass jar, because:

• The watercolour’s wet mass tone can be seen through the walls of the jar;
• The colour can be easily transferred from the jar to the palette with a palette knife.

But more importantly, there is no need for unnecessary additives or formulation changes to make processing in our colour manufacturing workshop easier, allowing the Cerulean Blue watercolour made by A J Ludlow to be at the highest pigment concentration and the pigment’s unique properties to be uncompromised. Anything less would be at odds with the brilliance and performance demanded of a professional quality watercolour range.

This Professional Watercolour is prepared using the mixed metal oxide inorganic pigment, cobalt (II) stannate, which gives the watercolour its bright and intense blue colour excellent light fastness and opacity. It therefore affords an opaque watercolour (as can be seen in the figure 1a below).

Figure 1: Assessment of (a) the opacity/transparency and (b) staining power of A J Ludlow Cerulean Blue Professional Watercolour*.

The Cerulean Blue watercolour does not lift out completely (as can be seen in figure 1b above) and so has a propensity to stain the watercolour paper slightly.

This watercolour has a fluid consistency and is easily transferred to the watercolour palette. The pigment used in this watercolour is relatively heavy and so has a natural tendency to separate slightly on standing in the jar. If this occurs, just stir the watercolour gently in the jar with a clean palette knife until the watercolour is fully homogeneous again.

Because of its hue and use by many artists, the colour cerulean blue has become synonymous with blue skies. It is interesting that the word cerulean is derived from the Latin word cӕruleus , meaning “dark blue, blue or blue-green”, which in turn is thought to be a derivative of the word cœlum , meaning heaven or sky.

Cerulean Blue is considered one of the traditional pigments for watercolour** and is generally regarded as a cool blue, with respect to colour “temperature”.

Pigment Details: Cobalt (II) Stannate / Colour Index Pigment Blue 35 ( C.I. PB35)

Footnotes:

*Details of how each watercolour is tested are given in the May 2021 ARTicle “Testing and Assessing the Properties of Watercolours – Part 1” (see also Part 2 of the ARTicle, which was published in June 2021).

**Mayer, R “The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques”, 5th Ed, Viking, New York, 1991, page 136