A J Ludlow Anthraquinone Blue Professional Watercolour

Anthraquinone 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, Anthraquinone Blue watercolour is lovingly handmade in the UK by a skilled artisan from the best ingredients and finest pigments.

Anthraquinone 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 Anthraquinone 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 a synthetic organic pigment, 6,15-dihydroanthrazine-5,9,14,18-tetrone. The pigment has been selected for its purity, high tinctorial strength, exceptional transparency, light fastness and very attractive blue colour. It therefore affords a transparent 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 Anthraquinone Blue Professional Watercolour*.

The Anthraquinone 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.

This watercolour has a structured consistency, but is easily transferred from the jar to the watercolour palette using a clean spatula or palette knife. As with all the Professional Watercolours from A J Ludlow, once water is added, this watercolour has excellent flow and is a joy to paint with.

The pigment used in Anthraquinone Blue watercolour has very good light fastness, even though it is derived from a colour used to dye cotton, C.I. Vat Blue 4, which was invented to replace the plant based dye, indigo. Other names for artists' colours based on this pigment include indanthrone blue and indanthrene blue.

Pigment Details: 6,15-dihydroanthrazine-5,9,14,18-tetrone / Colour Index Pigment blue 60 ( C.I. PB60)

Footnote:

*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).