[Immersion of Blue Pigments in Water]
Name: Carl Garris
Date and Time:
2017.[December].[11]
Location: Making and Knowing LabSubject: Immersion of Blue Pigments in Water
The author practitioner states that prepared azur desmail pigments prepared in oil, when immersed in water, would return to their natural state. Our hypothesis was that the "return to natural state" meant that the pigment would separate from the oil. We prepared two sets of beakers--in the bottom of each we prepared a small (unmeasured) amount of paint from Kremer azurite, lapis lazuli, smalt, and verditer and walnut oil. We made sure to use separate paint brushes for each paint so as to avoid cross contamination. We prepared the second set of beakers as the methodological problems of mixing when the entry did not instruct mixing only occurred to us after completing the mixing in the first set.
After mixing each paint, we filled each beaker with water. In the first set of beakers, we then mixed the liquid with a paint brush vigorously for a few minutes. In the second set of beakers, we allowed the liquid to sit. In all cases, the first set scattered the pigment into globules of pigment-tinted oil suspended in water (with one large globule at the bottom), whereas the second case resulted in an oil film on the bottom filled with pigment. The only major exception was the unmixed smalt paint in water, which slowly produced globules that rose to the top of the water. Some oil, at least, separated to the top in every beaker. From these results, it seems impossible to conclude anything about which pigment might have "returned to its natural state."
Date and Time:
2017.[December].[18]
Location: Making and Knowing LabSubject: Immersion of Blue Pigments in Water
We returned to examine the beakers, but they had begun to grow mold. We therefore cleaned up the experiment and took no further observations.
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