Interesting Facts About Paint!
--> People have been painting for as long as 30,000 years!
--> Early Cave paintings were drawn with red or yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide, and charcoal may have been made by early Homo sapiens as long as 30,000 years ago. These would have been ground to make up a primitive paint substance. Other ingredients used were animal blood and fat.
--> Sherwin-Williams brought us the first ready-to-use paint in 1866. Previously, paint had to be mixed manually using various materials to include – milk, olive oil, eggs, lime and other earth pigments, linseed oil, and many more.
* Sherwin-Williams also invented the re-sealable tin can.
--> The Earliest Known Oil Paintings Date Back to the 14th Century!
--> Before the emergence of linseed oil in paint artists had to mix the dried pigments into a paste using egg yolk!
--> Plato, the Greek philosopher, is credited with the discovery of being able to mix two different paint colors together to make a third color.
--> World War II Brought Changes To The Paint Industry!
Linseed oil was in short supply during World War II, forcing paint manufacturers to research other options. This led to the invention of artificial resins, which were cheap, held colour well and lasted a long time.
--> Acrylic Paint Only Became Commercially Available In The 50s!
The resin was patented in 1915 by a chemist and inventor Otto Röhm from Germany and continued to be developed up until it became widely available, making painting a whole lot easier for artists!
--> The color purple was once associated with royalty. At one time only aristocrats could afford the expensive pigment. During Roman times, it took 4 million crushed mollusk shells to create one pound of purple pigment.
--> Did you know that oil paints don’t dry? Instead they harden due to oxidation. This usually happens in about two weeks, and the paints are then ready to be varnished in roughly six months. But sometimes it can take years for an oil painting to fully harden!
--> Acrylic Paints Take Between 10 Minutes to 2 Hours To Dry!
But they can be kept wet with a moisture retaining palette and a water spray bottle!
--> Spray paint was invented due to a need. Francis Davis Millet is credited with the invention of spray paint while working under tight deadlines to complete construction for the Chicago World’s Fair.
--> It takes 570 Gallons of Paint to Repaint The White House... Costing a total of $20,000!
--> At one point, the most expensive color was ultramarine. It was expensive because it was made from lapis lazuli, which you might find in an ancient illuminated manuscript. Such manuscripts were created using paints made from a mixture of crushed precious stones and a binding agent.
--> Acrylic Paint Has A Lot of Big Names Behind It!
Acrylic paint has a lot of the great artists amongst it’s afficionados, including Roy Lichenstein, Andy Warhol, Bridget Riley and Mark Rothko among others!
**Bonus Fact – It took Michelangelo only 4 years to paint the famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the 1500s, but it took 20 years to restore it in the late 1900s.
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