This is a part of my series of fun fact Friday mini episodes about different colors. This week you can learn a bit about the history of different pigments used to create blue in artworks. For a long time, blue pigment was more valuable than gold. Blue pigments were so labor intensive and expensive that some prominent artists like Michelangelo were said to have left some paintings unfinished because they could not afford more blue paint. 

While we see blue all around us in the sky, the water, even people's eyes, blue pigments are relatively rare in nature. There is no blue pigment in people's eyes, just as the sky does not have blue pigment. Blue eyes, and the blue of the sky are just optical illusions produced by the shorter wavelengths of light scattering more readily through the gasses in earth's atmosphere or in the case of blue eyes, the way the light scatters through the fluid in the stroma of the iris. 

As always, you can find more at www.WhoArtEdPodcast.com 

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