Dirty Bomb Medicine

Monitoring body gamma radiation from a cow given Prussian Blue.

I’ll stop going on about Prussian blue soon and turn my attention to other blues soon, but this is something worth putting up.
When Norway discovered radioactive Caesium in Reindeer in 1992 they gave 1000’s of livestock Prussian Blue as an additive in their feed. Rather than being taken up in the bloodstream, the caesium binds to the Prussian Blue and is excreted. Because of the success in reducing radioactivity farmers in Russia and the Ukraine used it too. They also spread it over the soil in North wales inhibited the uptake of the radioactivity in grass and thus prevented livestock ingesting it, but making the hills blue.

just in case you get hit by a dirty bomb you can get the insoluble capsules below. Or just go to your nearest art shop!

Ding Dong

Thatcher’s Blue

Wild Water 5

Wild Water 5

Here is my cyanometer made from Dulux Colour Swatches. Wild Water 5 was the closest match for today.

Hokusai’s surf spot

The great wave of Kamogawa

Hokusai’s ‘The great Wave off Kamogawa’ was printed in 1829 and used PrussIan blue for the sea. That is Mount Fuji in the background and the print was the inspiration for the Quicksilver surfing logo. The Break is known as ‘Big Ben’, not sure why. Here are some pics of it nowadays.

Big Ben on a busy day

Typhoon Swell 2008 (so it does get pretty big)

‘In Hokusai’s print There are eight rowers per boat, clinging to their oars. There are two more passengers in the front of each boat, bringing the total number of  figures in the image to thirty. Using the boats as reference, one can approximate the size of the wave: the oshiokuri-bune were generally between 12 to 15 meters long, and noting that Hokusai reduced the vertical scale by 30%, the wave must be between 10 to 12 meters tall. ‘

Not a bad guess I reckon as i Just checked this weeks forecast  for it and  Surfline is reporting strong Gales and waves of 8-9 m !

Synonyms for Prussian blue

Prussian Blue Pigment

American blue, ammonium Prussian blue, Antwerp blue, ariabel dark blue, cyanine, Erlangen blue, French blue, gas blue, Haarlem blue, cyanine blue, Berlin blue, bronze blue, celestial blue, Chinese blue,  cobalt Prussian blue,  Erlangen blue, French blue, Hamburg blue, iron blue, lacquer blue, Leitch’s blue, Manox iron blue, Marie Louise blue, Milori blue, mineral blue, Monthier’s blue, new blue, oil blue, oriental blue, Paris blue, paste blue, Persian blue, potash blue, Radiogradase, Saxon blue, soluble blue, toning blue, Turnbull’s blue, Vossen blue.

Robin Egg Blue

Robin egg blue – in architecture it is the traditional  colour painted on the underside of exterior porches. they have been looking for it under the porch of Tate Britain, but have just found beige.  It is also known as  Tiffany Blue and was selected by founder Charles Lewis Tiffany for the cover of Blue Book, Tiffany’s annual collection of  handcrafted jewels, first published in 1845. Also referred to as robin’s-egg blue or forget-me-not blue, this distinctive color may have been chosen because of the popularity of the turquoise gemstone in 19th-century jewelry. Turquoise was also a favorite of Victorian brides who gave their attendants a dove-shaped broach of turquoise as a wedding day memento.

Prussian Blue in mourning vs Factitious Indigo

This is an extract from George Field’s Chromatography, or, A treatise on colours and pigments, and of their powers in painting (London, 1835). The extract below describes the merits of Prussian blue over Indigo. To create an Indigo using Prussian Blue he suggests  saddening it with black and  a suspicion of green.

‘In painting, indigo is not nearly so bright as Prussian blue, but it is extremely powerful and transparent, and may be described as a Prussian blue in mourning. Of great body, it glazes and works well both in water and oil. Its relative permanence as a dye has obtained it a false character of extreme durability as a pigment, a quality in which it is nevertheless very inferior even to Prussian blue. By impure air it is injured, and in glazing some specimens are firmer than others, but not durable; while in tint with white lead they are all fugitive. Employed in considerable body in shadow, it is more permanent, but in all respects Prussian blue is superior.

Despite this want of stability, indigo is a favourite colour with many artists, who sacrifice by its use future permanence to present effect. It is so serviceable a pigment for so many purposes, especially in admixture, that its sin of fugacity is overlooked. Hence we find indigo constantly mentioned in works on painting, their authors forgetting or not caring to remember that wholesome axiom, a fugitive colour is not rendered durable by being compounded. Artistically, it is adapted for moonlights, and when mixed with a little lamp black, is well suited for night clouds, distant cliffs. With a little raw umber and madder it is used for water in night effects. With the addition of a little madder it forms a good gray; and with madder and burnt Sienna is useful for dark rocks, this combination, with raw Sienna, being also eligible for boats. For these and other mixed tints, however, Prussian blue saddened by black with a suspicion of green in it, is equally fitted, and is more permanent. Indeed, it would be perhaps justifiable to introduce such a compound, under the name say, of Factitious Indigo.’

cyanotype test

Cyanotype

Glass Negative

Here is my second  attempt at making a cyanotype. Ten years ago I was given 3 boxes of glass negatives, there must be about 100 of them, landscapes, portraits, seascapes. I’ve been meaning to develop them in some way to get a better look at them

It seemed quite relevant to use them  to make a few tests with for the final text based blue print I will be doing for Fabrica. I exposed this under UV lights for about 25 mins.  Very Jack Hargreaves. More on the process and history on the cyanotype page.

 

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