I tested the MOST EXPENSIVE paint in the world.. (not what I expected) 

Now I wonder what other hyped, mythical, elusive tools and materials are just hogwash 😬… Let me know in the comments what else you would like to see put under my skeptical microscope!

So usually paint manufacturers don’t get the pigment from the pigment refining process because it’s too lengthy and expensive. Instead they grind up the entire stone and mull it into paint. It’s far cheaper and that’s also why it turns up so pithy and weak. Ultramarine is chemically identical to Lapis Lazuli which is why we use it, because it’s far cheaper to get the pigment from synthetic ultramarine than from genuine lapis lazuli

Lapis lazuli is meant to be glazed over a blue underpainting (different values of blue and white) that uses a less expensive blue. The result is brilliant.

I’m a restorer. Lapis Lazuli was NEVER mixed with other colors or used thickly on its own. The underpainting was mostly grisaille, meaning “black and white”, or brown and white. Lapis lazuli was glazed over. Lapis lazuli was almost always only used in the drapery of Madonnas….because it was expensive and “deserving”! It’s a shame that artists these days don’t learn anything about technique and science of materials.

Alpay: "The most well known example of use of lapis lazuli.." My brain: "Minecraft, of course!" Alpay: "...is the Girl With The Pearl Earring." My brain: "Yes, of course it is! That's what I was thinking about too.."

I made my own. I got a large piece of Afghani Lapis and crushed it, then powdered it and mixed it with some linseed oil, walnut oil, and/or poppy oil. I only mix up enough paint for a few weeks, but my guess is that I could make 4-5 times the amount of paint in that tube for less than $100. There’s something very satisfying about making your own paint and if you get your lapis (or other mineral) ground to a fine powder, you can store it that way forever.

It's not enough to mix crushed lapiz with oil to make paint. The impurities have to be removed. Cennini used a process of adding the crushed lapis powder to a heated mixture of mastic, rosin, and beeswax and letting it cool. Then he softened the mixture in warm water and kneaded it with his hands in the water. The blue pigment comes out in the water, and the impurities stayed behind in the wax & resin mixture.

Back in the olden days when Lapis Lazuli was used, bright colours (which were often very expensive) were used as thin glazes over grisaille. They weren't mixed with other colours.

You should judge the pigment like this by making your own paint. Oil paint manufacturers will stretch a pigment like this out way too far making its tinting strength almost non-existent. Less pigment, less strength. Although there is no comparison to the synthetic potent ultramarine or the king of power blues Phthalo.

This colour was likely used as many glazed layers to build up the colour and intensity. Comparing it that way with ultramarine would be very interesting

Ive run into this before, what i discovered is that the expense in the past was not the stone but the preparation of the stone. Modern manufacturers like schminke or daniel smith just grind up lapiz lazuli and mix it with a binder. To make the beautiful ultramarine of the old masters requires a much more in depth grinding and washing process to eliminate the impurities and increase the intensity of the pigment.

I think you are missing the reason why it was valuable...as a pigment that was permanent blue was a rarity...often used as a glaze...not as a solid colour...it has wonderful luminosity when glazed...the benefit of modern ultramarine is has both properties of transparency and a more solid pigment...I would not necessarily say is is overrated. Historically it was valuable...blue was one of the important colours necessary to bring volume and completeness to paintings. Historically it was a valuable resource. it is valuable only now due to its rarity and difficulty in obtaining as most if not all comes from Afghanistan whose history of a warring country has made obtaining it difficult. It may not be used much now but for restoration it is important. .

Isn't Lapis Lazuli so rare because blue is the rarest natural pigment? Even plants and animals that appear blue don't contain any blue pigmentation. So Lapis Lazuli is one of the few sources of natural blue pigment.

This make me think. Back in the day when masters had to make their own paints because there weren't convenient art supply stores. It would have taken a long time to make a painting with Lapis Lazuli. First they have to grind the stone themselves and make their paint. Then they would have to paint one layer at a time and wait for it to dry, then paint another layer, repeat to the intensity desired. That is actually the origin of the phrase of "A master never blames his tools." because back in the day, the master made his own tools. It is perfectly fine to buy a pigment and blame it for being worthless.

I don't use oil paints, so my exposure to Lapis Lazuli is through watercolors. We've become very used to Ultramarine's intensity. I suspect one of the reasons it has the reputation for "most expensive" comes from it have been used in huge quantities to get the results that classical artists got. I think, tho, that the price of Yinmin blue is substantially more expensive, now, than Lapis, yes?

When Lapus Lazuli was used as a blue in painting, our modern colors did not yet exist. At the time, the paint was probably meant to be layered rather than mixed. That would have been the best way to experience it's intensity. Prussian blue, and Ultramarine blue date from the 19th century, and Phthalo blue (Phthalocyanine) is from the early twentieth century. Like you said, Ultramarine is much better, and that is pretty much why it was developed.

I'm fond of schmincke horadam lapis lazuli, I bought 2 years ago and used till the end of the small tube, and you know, it's such a shame is discontinued! I recently bought the Daniel Smith one and it's different for shade and texture, but I really love it as well. The hue is not rich blue, nor super pigmented, there's an article from Daniel Smith founder explaining it's uniqueness, after the concerns expressed by a professional watercolor artist.

Well the price is not related to quality of color, but to the effort to get it. You need to import lapis lazuli from Afghanistan - that's a hurdle I imagine, and for each stone you get less than 1% of usable pigment in it. I would like to see comparison of this shminke with michael harding lapis lazuli oil paint, and self made one using oil and pure pigment. But that could exceed video budget :D

Imagine saving money to buy this expensive paint expecting it to be the best paint ever and then you're just completely disappointed because it sucks 😱😭 I would probably start crying 😅🙈

Have ever you used it for glazing?

I saw someone swatching Michael Harding Lapis Lazuli which is likely the highest quality without extra fillers and it was quite transparent which makes me think it’s best suited to many layers of traditional glazing to build up a jewel like luminosity. Manufacturers did a good turn all the same when they invented ultramarine which is better for impasto and they have been doing it with other colours like reds intended for cars too! 🦋✨🚗✨🖌

Makes you appreciate the old classics all the more for pulling off those paintings with a watery challenging media.

I think the softness and grayness of it is simply what makes it so beautiful. Similar to how terre verte is often a very weak color. Is it worth it? Probably not, but it doesn't mean it can't be a wonderfull pigment :)

There is man in EU who brought back the violet color of the Roman times by rediscovering it’s extraction method. That paint is expensive because it’s takes months to make lol

It sounds like the pigment hasn’t been rendered into a liquid form, so whenever you mix a different color into it, that color is just coating the individual grains of the ultra fine powder, rather than blending the colors.

Synthetic diamonds may be just as genuine and beautiful as ones that took millions of years to form and French ultramarine was a colour that was revolutionary and wonderful but there is a history and spiritual quality to the original that is worth appreciating. It’s all in eye of the beholder as with anything or anyone we love. 💖 I’d love to see how it would work in glazes. It may shine like a jewel in layers or traditional glazing but it could be too that that formulation wasn’t as intense as it would be hand made. And it may depend on if you are a luxury lover or not. Some people think a hundred thousand dollar handbag is worth every penny and for them that is true.

I see glazing by the old masters wasn't just for cost-cutting, but practicality until French Ultramarine and Cobalt finally emerged around the 18th-19th centuries.

lapis lazuli is my most favorite gem stone! the pigment is absolutely to die for when properly extracted

I think the problem is, it's price is due to it's rarity and it's existence is due to it's history. It was really the only blue that had intensity back in the day and was mainly used to show off religous paintings to wow people. Artists used to have to decide with the client before hand if they wanted to use it due to it's cost, they would then have to price it up based on the blue alone as the painting itself would be a fraction of th cost. It's like expecting a classic 1930's car to outperform a ferrari just based on the cost of the classic 1930's car.

PHEW. I am an AVID fan of genuine ultramarine/lapis lazuli, so I can tell you a little bit about what I know about it. So lapis lazuli is an expensive mineral to source. The highest quality stone coming from mines in Afghanistan. Though, the stone is just one reason why it's so expensive. The pigment is made from crushing up the stone into smaller and smaller particles; however, if you crush it too small, then the color dulls. There's a "sweet spot." Once ground up, you don't just mull it into paint like you would with other mineral-derived pigments. Old methodologies involved melting together a waxy paste made of beeswax, mastic gum, and pine resin that you would mix the ground stone into and stretch into smaller sticks. This waxy mixture serves as a "sponge" trapping impurities. From THERE, once your mixture cools into a block, you knead it in warm water (with some methodologies calling for a basic pH achieved with something like lye). As you need, the final pigment is released. Each "cycle" of kneading takes HOURS, and you can do multiple rounds of kneading for each stick (though the pigment becomes less pure and takes on a grayish tone with each successive run as you start to knead out the impurities that the wax mixture was trapping). THEN you strain the water, collect the pigment, let it dry. THEN AND ONLY THEN you have your final pigment that you can mull into paint. I've done it once myself and it took about a week to go from raw stone chunks to paint. The other thing that makes it expensive is the fact that due to its chemical properties, it doesn't need much oil to be a workable paint, meaning if you want to fill a tube with it, you'll need MORE pigment in the tube than with some other colors. ALL of those things compound to make it extremely expensive to buy. That's why you'll typically see it in historical paintings reserved for the Virgin Mary's veil or other important religious/social elite figures AND why it's most often applied as glazes as opposed to being mixed in the first layers. With the development of the ultramarine blue we know today, there are VERY few companies that make it, and some of them mix our modern ultramarine into the tube as well to reduce the amount of genuine pigment they have to put into each tube (shady af). If ANY of y'all read this far, I hope you learned something or found it interesting! It's a beautiful pigment with a FASCINATING history! EDIT: After watching the video, I can say that I absolutely do not like Mussini's version of this paint. Idk how THEY made their lapis, but I have a feeling that their extraction methodology is flawed, they ground the pigment TOO finely, and/or they combined all of the pigment extractions into the same batch (as opposed to discarding the more impure final kneading extractions and only keeping the purest blue pigment). Alpay, if you'd be willing to give genuine ultramarine/lapis lazuli another shot, I will PERSONALLY go through the process of making another batch of both the oil paint AND powder pigment for you myself AND send it to you for FREE!

I came across your content recently, and I have been loving it! Nice work 👏

lapis lazuli is meant to be a pure glazing color not ment to be mixed with anything else, its possible you mixed with titanium which over powers, try stack lead white or crementiz white

This is awesome! Yes, right in the beginning, it looked so transparent, as you explained @8:30

In the time we live in now, we are blessed with many new pigments at affordable prices, and better quality than previous centuries. Sometimes you read a certain will to 'paint like the old masters' so that is pure sentiment, the old masters would probably have been very happy with our tubes.

The Lapis Lazuli watercolor is also quite subtle. With my style I don’t have a use for it at the moment - but never say never - I might find a need for it at some time. Thanks for your honesty & time on this review-I enjoyed it❤

Schimnke probably used the smallest amount of lapis lazuli pigment. Cornelissen in London still sells the pigment.

Artists used to use lapis lazuli to paint the Virgin Mary's robes and they used glazes over a grisaille. Did I spell that right?

It’s a lovely parrot and a good test subject for blueness.

Thanks! I enjoyed that

Totally understand how you feel. I bought this a couple of years ago and used a lot of it and had to stop only after realising that I'm not going to get what I want out of it. Now I just use it as a glaze here and there.

I just saw a makeup artist ground up a piece of lapis lazuli to see how it worked as eyeshadow the way ancient Egyptians may have used it. But mostly it makes me think of wonderful paintings of the Madonna. 🦋✨ A few people have said it’s toxic with water which making me reconsider the watercolour version but have to research to see if it’s true and not jump to conclusions. Maybe Daniel Smith found a way around that or perhaps as long as you don’t eat it or only ingest in small amounts are fine. 💖 I hear celery juice and infrared saunas are both good to clean the body of toxins so a helpful thing for painters.

Good to know humanity has been overhyping things since ancient times

old masters used lapis lazuli mixed with linseed oil. the paint you tested has resin oil which is not the same. old holand is the paint that uses recipes of old masters.

in watercolor a lot of brands like D. Smith and small paint makers offer this paint and I have no idea who buys it. Even in the most thickly applied swatches I've seen it looks like water with a particle of weak blue in it. And I love more muted natural pigments - potter's pink and viridian for example are a couple of my favorite paints, but those are far more vibrant in comparison and are really useful in mixing.

I prefer it for glazing. It has a beautiful natural tint. Also use lead white with it for a better experience.

Do the Genuine Cerulean blue next ,it's also expensive, and Vermillion

It's useful if it is used for painting with the glazing technique, building up thin layers gradually. That's how it was used and using this method can make it a very intense colour.

Apparently this pigment can only be mined in Kotcha, Afganistan. A certain area and it's been that way since the pigment was discovered... which is basically why it's so pricy. I can see why synthetic pigments for it is more popular. I do have water colour of it and it's fine? Watercolors you want that sort of transparency though.

Next you should try YinMin Blue. And compare it to Lapis Lazuli, Ultramarine, and Cobalt Blue. Yes?

Thx

This makes me think that the colours of old had to be glazed with over and over to get the intensity up. So, lapis looked very intense compared to other colours because all other colours were more duller that lapis, which makes lapis pop out. I would really like to see how would it look if you glazed over and over with lapis lazuli. I think that would be a nice experiment. Amazing video, btw. :) Thank you.

I just discovered you who I consider is a fine artist BUT what hits me to hear you say over and over again that you don’t care about what people say, I don’t want to cross my boundaries but it’s a little concerning that when I paint . That very moment of peace of expressing myself… I have invested feelings and skills in a painting. I learn every time I watch an artist . That defensive mode does not sit well with me. Through criticism we can better our art on every level and for ourself. Just my honest feeling about it. I am Not a professional but I need criticism good or bad . Thank you for sharing,great work. Jose from Melbourne Australia

What does the lapis do when thinned & mixed with other semi precious stone pigments? Say amozonite? I imagine applied in thin layering very beautiful.

This was a valuable experiment.

When doing my gem charm chart "Lapis Lazuli" was chosen for the sign of Virgo, though instead of the Color ~ the Words were written within the Arch of the 🌈 🌈 for all the colors a Saphire Stone comes in ~ underneath a cup with Wings and the caption IOLITE for the charges of the content. The [LABEL] was the Sight - Obvious for that small tube of paint, in order to /get/ the Ultra Marine "Terrific" it also has to be used {straight} from the apportion, with that some of the tiniest brushes I have is use.

I’m VERY surprised ! Thank you for saving me money 😄👍🏼

Blue is the rarest color in nature. Its really complicated for plants to make blue, In order for a molecule to appear blue to humans, it needs to absorb red light, the lowest energy part of the visible spectrum. This is why lapis was so prized for artist in olden days.

I feel like this is a perfect mix between ultramarine blue and phthalo blue. Phthalo blue is my favorite blue i honestly consider it to be a mind blowing color it is so beautiful 😁💙

Never fell for it and dropped mad $$ for lapis. As an artist acrylic paint maker friend of mine in NYC said of lapis, "Because of the rarity and extraction process to get the pure stone particles makes it expensive, end results are not much chroma, it's a rather dull grayish blue." Too many complexities getting perfect lapis. Even if multiple glazes with it makes an exquisite difference, ultramarine is satisfactory for me.

Well yea, its expensive because the pigment is rare, not because its an absolutely amazing chromatic characteristic lol it's as if someone made a paint out of gold. It would probably suck, but it would be hella expensive because gold is

Very interesting video. Could the binding material in the paint cause these disadvantages? Since you make all of these experiments, could you try mixing it on your own? Not only oil paint, but also tempera. I would love to see how such a paint would behave (as it was often used for example in manuscripts).

That smock is super cool

Is there a chance that its this way because the pigment is diluted in this formula? That if more pigment was added to the oil? Would it then thicken it to an unusable texture??? I wonder.

I loved this thank u

"Even the name is starting to annoy me" 😂😂 😂

The lapis lazuli we have today, for the most part, isn’t like it was back in the day. True LL paint, the pigment needs to be separated from the grey sodalite pigment thru a costly and time consuming process! The pigment from that process is VERY bright, vibrant & BLUE!! Just like ultramarine blue. Look up the process, it’s actually quite interesting!

I prefer the lapis and love the parrot!!!

Wow very interesting. I thought , because it was the most expensive, it would be mesmerizing. Thanks for saving me one day buying it 😅😅

Shout out to Jean Baptiste Guimet for creating the synthetic form of Lapis Lazuli (PB29 Ultramarine Blue) and spearheading its wide and inexpensive accessibility we see today

Thank you for the mind blowing"ly" honest review.

Looks like the perfect blue for a Zorn palette! 😏

Its a beautiful stone i think its better off as jewellery, Thanks for thd tip 😊👍🏾

Really enjoyed this one. I'd definitely like to see more "Alpay Efe Investigates X" type videos. Not sure on which topic though - I'm a novice, so I really "don't know what I don't know." But I do know that videos like this are always interesting to me.

I've never tried this pigment in oil but I have tried it in watercolours and it is equally disappointing.

does it have a better effect with using some medium? I have a viridian red that becomes more of a raw sienna when i use galkyd

I had a similar experience with cobalt violet (Windsor and Newton) years ago, it was the most expensive paint in the shop 80 punts (old irish money) and the experience was similarly underwhelming

The old masters used it in glazes. Glazes gave paintings that glow, that look that you don't really get with direct painting. Maybe when used in glazes it has a look that you wouldn't get with ultramarine, I don't know. The transparency and handling would probably be somewhat different in a different brand of paint, or if you mix the paint from scratch. And when you mix with white, I'm guessing you used titanium, which has a very high tint strength and can easily kill the color. If you had used a lead white or warm white, the color might have been less gray, and I'm guessing the hue would have been more greenish due to the yellow of the lead, also more transparent.

Imagine what the masters of the past would have been able to achieve with modern paints.

I'm still convinced the gem stone pigments have got to handle light better than inks. They sure work great when cut properly and put in settings. It just stands to reason that this sparkle has got to help pigmants. Will diamond dust do good? What about gold its shinny?

Lapis Lazuli was also the blue part of King Tut’s sarcophagus and other miscellany found in is tomb. The blue and the gold rimmed the headdress.

do you reckon it lost some of its vibrancy from being in the tube for so long? i wonder what the difference would be like tube vs powder with different mediums

Hello can you please do a video about oil paint and sizes from tubes to cans? And what artists who like To Paint on large sizes can buy thank you!

No complaints about his assessment of it as a modern option for normal painting. In centuries past, it held up to the hype because you basically didn't have any other options fit getting that intense blue.

This was more or less what I expected. Azurite is very similar but with a more green tinge. These were pretty much the blues they had to work with back in the day, and sometimes old manuals will reveal hints of the tricks they used to make it work (Pacheco, the teacher of Velazquez, mentions something about how he layers azurite to make a blue sky). The experience of painting was quite different back in the day, since each pigment would behave in its own weird way (some were gritty, others ropy when mixed with oil etc), it sort of gives you a new appreciation for how difficult it was, and is part of the reason why older paintings look different. Of course they used lead white instead of titanium, which takes away some of the strength of the white. BTW Vermeer was unusual in using lapis lazuli throughout the painting (even underpainting). Not sure how he could afford it.

I think what you might have overlooked is that there's a reason traditional Lapis paint isn't common anymore. Better blues have been invented/discovered since. As a modern painter is doesn't make sense to use it other than for historical novelty. You have to remember though that for centuries Lapis was the ONLY blue paint available PERIOD!

Great video as usual! What was that fanatstic cello song in the middle there?

Nothing bad to say about Japanese surprise boxes, but please major art brands, sponsor this guy, he has top quality content :)

If you drape a mirror with fabric it will not reflect light. Same way with lapis and Titanium oxide. You want to prop it up to the light and let it bounce through the matrix, then look at the refracted light, like a prism.

Thanks for the honest review, for me Indian yellow oil paint was also not very useful!

Its for glazing not for underpainting. See Jan Van Eyck works.

It's not intended for artists - the color is used on fences in thick layers just to show the person doing it can afford it.

Did you try enchanting your brush with it?

You can do sfumato easily because it is like transparent

I think i have that green pigment. One of the most beautiful colors i owned. Blue is transparent it would be better to get the pigment so you can make your own paint texture/structure

Think it could be important for restauration and conservation uses to stay as close as possible to the original colour.

I love organic paint

i imagine this should be used for multiple glazing layers

Probably best used for a glaze

u need a much higher quality of lapis lazuli paint, what u have is the ash thats been turned into paint (lower quality) to see really good results u need to use higher quality material which costs a ton more

It would have been useful to see what it looks like glazes over a white ground and over/under otherr transparent glazes such as yellow, snd crimson