Butterflies, flowers and gorgeous blue! These things evoke impressions of spring and summer in my mind and are a balm to my soul on the many grey, cold days we're getting lately. Luckily, the second in a series of posts about colours featured in the book Nature's Palette, will concentrate on the colour 'flax-flower blue'. A soft blue that appears on flax flowers, the small tortoiseshell butterfly and in the beautiful mineral, azurite.
Vegetable Reference: Flax Flower
Flax Linum usitatissimum (also known as linseed) is a flowering plant grown for its seeds and fibres. The seeds can be ground down to produce linseed oil and the fibres can be turned into the fabric, linen. In the rough gouache sketch above, the flax flowers are painted in Winsor and Newton ultramarine, the colour suggested as an equivalent for flax-flower blue by Nature's Palette. Below is a block of 'flax-flower blue' according to the CYMK reference number:
Flax flowers are usually blue, a colour rare in nature. Molecules called anthocyanins, which usually give plants red, orange or violet colours, are modified by acidity or by forming complexes with metals or other anthocyanins to give the colour blue. Blue is never straightforward in nature! There's an interesting article by the University of Adelaide entitled 'Why Is The Colour Blue So Rare In Nature?' if you'd like to learn more and of course, my blog post about Kingfishers and why their feathers are so interesting.
There used to be a thriving flax industry on the Isle of Man, with flax mills found across the Island during the 1800s. Flax was grown on the Island, but at times demand was so great that it was also imported from Ireland to be processed here. For more information about the Manx flax industry, see the Isle of Man Today article 'Flax, A Lost Manx Industry' by Dave Martin (2019) and my blog post on Tromode and the history of Cronkbourne Village.
Animal Reference: Tortoiseshell Butterfly
The small tortoiseshell butterfly (Aglais urticae) is commonly seen around the Isle of Man in the warmer months, but can also be seen in winter as it overwinters in sheds or outbuildings. In my sketch of the small tortoiseshell above, the blue spots on the edges of the wings are coloured with Caran D'Ache Luminance pencil in genuine cobalt blue as that's the equivalent shade indicated by the book, Nature's Palette, for the colour flax-flower blue.
The wings of butterflies have a covering of delicate scales that build up to form the distinctive patterns of colours that each species is known for. Animals are generally unable to produce a blue pigment and their blue colourings are created by structures evolved to reflect blue light. The photo below shows that the scales in the area of the blue spots are not actually a uniform blue colour, each scale is reflecting blue light to a different degree according to the angle of the scale to the viewer. This means they all look a bit different and range from white to deep blue.
The eggs of the small tortoiseshell are laid in May on the underside of nettle leaves, hence the urticae part of the Latin name, as 'urtica' means stinging nettle. Apparently, the Aglais part refers to Aglaia, a daughter of the Greek god Zeus who was admired for her beauty. For more on this elegant butterfly, please see the Scottish Wildlife Trust website, the Manx Wildlife Trust page or take a look at the book 'Manx Beetles, Bugs and Butterflies: An illustrated guide to their identification' by Stella Thrower and available from Bridge Bookshop.
Mineral Reference: Azurite
Azurite is a deep blue mineral that often has green inclusions of malachite. Both malachite and azurite are copper carbonate minerals that form under the same conditions and which is why they're often found together.
Azurite is said to be the most important blue pigment in European art in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, often used when ultramarine was considered too expensive or difficult to obtain. Hans Holbein used azurite in the background of 'A Lady with a Squirrel and a Starling' (c.1526-28), and would likely to have called the colour chessylite (after the mines in Chessy, Eastern France, where a rich deposit had been discovered) or citramarine, meaning 'on the near side of the sea'. This latter name distinguished it from ultramarine, which was more precious and came from 'beyond the sea'.
The pigment number of Azurite is PB30 and it is often referred to as Blue Verditer when produced synthetically.
Azurite sometimes darkens over time and can turn green, depending on the conditions in which it's kept. Giotto used azurite to give the sky of 'Lamentation (The Mourning of Christ) its bright blue colour. To keep this pigment blue, Giotto was said to have applied it to dry plaster, as opposed to applying colour directly to the wet plaster as he did with other parts of the fresco. To truly appreciate the power of azurite, I suggest taking a look at The Scrovegni Chapel, the building which houses Giotto's frescos and this blog post by Glennis McGregor which discusses colour symbolism in the frescos.
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