True Blue

It’s great to have Napoleonic Blue back in my Chalk Paint® colour range here in Europe; and for all my customers around the world who've been familiar with it for years, here’s a timely reminder of just what a deep, rich and warm blue it really is.

My inspiration isn’t the diminutive Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte himself, but the classic French Empire style he put his emperor’s seal to. It’s like saying ‘Victorian’ to describe an era rather than Queen Victoria herself, and to that extent Napoleonic Blue represents a ‘regimented’ style: it’s dark, it’s rich, it’s a bit ‘masculine’, I suppose. The French Empire style under Napoleon borrowed wholesale from classical Greece and Rome in a grand style with military motifs and masculine colours (and don’t forget Napoleon had conquered Egypt, which was yet another classical influence with its vibrant azure blues, rich greens, red ochre and acid yellows).

Pigments – something borrowed, something blue

Some of my stockists have likened Napoleonic Blue to the colour of freshly picked blueberries, and even the perfect blue for creating the Union Jack flag (though I’m not sure what the French would think of this!). I see it as a homage to ‘ultramarine blue’, which was extracted from the semi-precious stone lapis lazuli – the incredibly bright blue pigment that was reputedly more expensive than gold in medieval times and the forerunner of all artists’ blues. It was used by some Medieval and Renaissance artists strictly to paint Mary and Jesus’ robes.

The history of colour in Art (which I studied) is a bit of a detective story and is fascinating in itself – but it boils down to the discovery of pigments. These are very fine powders sourced from the earth, from plants (and from dyes and synthetic materials). They’re a bit like spices with varying strengths and properties – some are opaque, some are like grains, some mix with oil, while others work better with water. There are actually no blue pigments you can find straight from the earth, so it’s always been a complicated and expensive process to get that 'true' blue (as with lapis lazuli).

Something versatile, something new

The great thing about Napoleonic Blue is that because it’s so rich and warm and strong and pure, I can see it being used in so many different ways. As a 'regal' stand alone, or with whites for example as you get all these pale warm blues. If you add dark wax it makes it silkier, deeper and even more gorgeous. Here are some neat ideas (below) found online:

The colour is absolutely tailor-made for neoclassical interiors but also works very well with the Swedish style. It’s a winning combination (well, it was for Napoleon till he met his Waterloo).

And although it refers back to the past it also has a more modern feel 1960’s pop art feel to it too – that bright blue used with orange or the bright-blue-with-bright-green mix so it looks fantastic with or over Barcelona Orange (which also gives it a truer navy blue) as well as with Antibes Green (see below).

Just looking at my Chalk Paint® colour card, you can see the range of blues goes from violet and lavender blues to grey blues, navy blues and the greenish hues of turquoise. Aubusson Blue for example, is from Prussian Blue, a cold, greeny blue, whereas Napoleonic Blue is a warm blue with the faintest hint of red (so it makes for a great purple – a favourite colour of Napoleon’s).

To get a warm blue you need an undertone of red and more red will give you a good purple especially with a bit of white added. When combined with Old White or Paris Grey, Napoleonic Blue can be used to create a really mellow farmhouse grey blue. When you start mixing my blues with other hues in the colour wheel, you’ll really notice just how vast the blue colour range is.

I created my paint, Chalk Paint®, from the idea of the artist using a palette to mix colours rather than robotically selecting from a bewildering kaleidoscopic chart – so go on, use Napoleonic Blue and be an artist!

Yours, Annie

P.S. I would like to thank my stockists and others for some of the ideas shown here via Pinterest and blogs which I acknowledge below. Apologies if I have omitted anyone! Search #Napoleonic on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for more inspiration.

Finding Silver Pennies for the ‘grain sack dresser’

www.findingsilverpennies.com/2013/06/grain-sack-dresser-before-after.html

Bad Groupie for the Napoleonic Blue Piano
http://bad-groupie.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/blue-painted-piano.html?m=1

Reloved Rubbish for the Union Jack chair
http://relovedrubbish.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/chalk-painted-union-jack-chair-on-wheels.html

Suite Pieces for the 2-colour distressed wood
http://suitepieces.com/2-color-distress-with-chalk-paint/

Kelly at TheLily Pad Cottage, for the boy’s bed
http://www.thelilypadcottage.com/2013/08/annie-sloan-chalk-painted-bed.html

Tea and Roses
www.pinterest.com/deborahwestfarm/

Bookmark (2) – Traditional Paints and Finishes

  

… After completing the groundbreaking (and back-breaking) 'Complete Book of Decorative Paint Techniques' [Bookmarks (1) February 2014],  my publishers in the early 1990s were after the next bestseller, so with Kate Gwynn again designing, I wrote 'Traditional Paints and Finishes' (US title 'Classic Paints and Faux Finishes'.) 

This was a the history and sourcebook of all the different sorts of artisan paints, pigments and colours – a lot about making paint, and less on techniques. Check out the back cover contents below which features shots from my step-by-step stencilling and distressing a cabinet!

Plastered

If I was to pick out a feature I was particular pleased with, it would be the plaster finishes – and I did lots of them. 

Creating the props and effects for this book was a huge task, literally. This was in the days before Photoshop so we made these huge boxes with plaster in them and then I painted them and we shot them. The pic below also show my early infatuation with sgraffito which I’ve also recently blogged about.

There were no computer geeks and graphic designers doing fancy stuff on Macs! You had to make these things. And they were so beautiful, even if they weighed a ton! And the greater shame was that after the photo shoot, we had to throw them away. Anyway, looking back at my first big breaks in publishing I am very, very proud of these early gems.

Absorbed by paint

Researching the history of decorative paints –including limewashing, découpage, fresco and the use of glue size, and old varnishes and waxes, as well as how to make paints from natural pigments – spurred me on to develop my own paints as I became more and more absorbed by what paint is and how it works (and there’s a post to come on that…). It wasn’t about nostalgia, it was "a reaction to the blandness and uniformity of modern paints.”

I was reacting against the standardisation that plastic paints produced. Oil was traditionally the classic paint everybody used, so we did both books using oils – back then I thought it was the only way I could get that translucency. I had by then started to try out my own paints (e.g. early versions of Chalk Paint® in Chateau Grey and Aubusson Blue) and some of these featured in both books.

I suppose, in a modest way, with these two titles I helped kick start the rediscovery of traditional paints and paint effects. The use of many softer and subtler colours allowed novice and more experienced decorators a chance to reclaim the look of earlier times. Some of it will look dated now as fashion in decoration comes and goes (and I have developed more deeper, warmer colours), but the principles and fundamentals hold good. And of course today I have my fabulously versatile Chalk Paint® range so you don’t have to make your own paints from scratch as I had to all those years ago.

You could say that you get my whole history in paint mixing and colour theory in each Chalk Paint® pot!

Yours, Annie