On my palette: Winter blues

I know, it's spring all around here, at least on this side of the globe, and many of you don't want to be reminded of winter right now. But Blue is this month's colour for the Colour Challenge, and blue for me is the colour of winter. The bluish tones of snow and ice, deep blue skies contrasting the snow white landscape, and that special, magical time of transition, when day turns to night, and everything is bathed in blue - the Blue Hour. It is my favourite time of the day, which is so special because it's so short, and so easily missed if you don't pay attention. It's most beautiful and intense up in the mountains.Which really is the best place to be in winter anyway.

I love winter, and blue makes me happy. So here's my blue winter page for March:

Blue is one of the three primary colours, it's complementary colour is orange. It's geometric form is the circle. It ranges from 500 to 450nm on the spectrum. Blue is quite a mysterious colour. There are many languages wich don't have a separate word for blue, but only one word for both blue and green, or blue and dark. In ancient Greece and Egypt, there was no word for blue at all. Blue pigments belonged among the most expensive, and there were many wars fought in the 17th and 18th century because of blue. Among the most prized and exclusive blues were Indigo and Ultramarin. Ultramarin, made from Lapislazuli from mines in Afghanistan, was one of the most expensive pigments, and only the most famous and succesful painters were able to find patrons who would be willing to finance it.

I've been wanting to use one of these snow flakes for ages. It comes from a table decoration chain, which I've cut apart. I also did some hand stitching on it.

The connotations of blue are: romance, sky, water, fidelity, infinity, truth, clarity, wisdom, longing, reliability, consistence, peace, contemplation, purity, justice, other-worldliness and cool distance. It is the colour of intuition, yearning, dejection, intangible mystery, intensive passion. It is the colour of the sky, both day and night, of goddesses, mermaids. Blue has a calmig, relaxing effect and is the classic colour for meditation.

The blues I used for my colour page are: Indanthrene Blue, Phtalocyanine Blue, Cerulean Blue, Primary Cyan, Light Blue and Light Blue Violet. I used Winsor&Newton, Liquitex and Lascaux acrylic paints.

Some expressions can have quit different meanings in different languages. In English, feeling blue means that one is feeling sad, melancholic, depressed. In German, blue is not really associated with any of these feelings, being blue means being completely drunk. Although the said feelings could follow afterwards...

Linking this up to Palette & Paint as well. Go and have a look what everyone else was up to, and what paints and supplies they used.