Hello everybody
@ultramarine hello ultramarine! I have enjoyed having you as one of my alternative birth stones :)
@Absinthe Oh hi! that's amazing. My Chinese name has the meaning of the color of ultramarine.
@Absinthe Almost... Qunqing群青 is sometime for experts/artists, or more like written language. In my case it's 海蓝 or "sea blue" literally
@ultramarine so the color itself rather than the gem?
@ultramarine okay, one more funny observation. I make soap. One of the products for coloring it is called ultramarine (which I think is based on mica or some kind of oxides not the gem) but it comes in pretty much all the colors. So you can buy Ultramarine Red, Blue, Lavender, Pink etc.. It just hurts my ears to hear it used like that. Similar to when people refer to all carbonated beverages as "cokes". What kind of coke do you want? I'll take a 7Up. :)
@Absinthe that's interesting to know. all I know is we apply "French ultramarine" to a lot of oil paintings. It's a kind of transparent blue color which is necessary for normal paintings. I guess the color is made from chemicals that imitate the color of the gem. (for carbonated beverages, I don't particularly like them. sorry I know. Just plain water, coffee and tea.)
@Absinthe you are right. it's actually lapis lazuli that "French Ultramarine" imitates. I was wrong...
@ultramarine Not sure if there was ever a color made from ultramarine, not unlike lapis lazuli which was actually ground up and became some pigments