Some interesting facts about paint…
Paint is the best thing to happen to a creative soul since the invention of the bread-slicing machine…
Paint allows us to do all kinds of things, both functional and creative, from painting fences as a weather guard to painting a wall inside as part of a home décor project.
There’s paint for indoors and outdoors, there’s paint that helps reduction of dirt and dust build up and there is paint that comes already textured — and obviously, there is every colour under the rainbow to choose from. Here are some interesting facts about paint that will make you view this remarkable invention in a different light.
- While it took Michelangelo only four years to paint the famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the 1500s, it took almost 20 years to restore it in the late 1900s!
- The ‘colour wheel’ was developed by Sir Isaac Newton in 1706.
- Archaeologists have unearthed evidence of interior painting traced all the way back to the first century in China, found in ancient palaces built around this time.
- Analyses shows that ancient craftsmen applied ground pigments such as ochre to wet plastered walls to ‘paint’ the interior surfaces, purely for decorative purposes.
- In ancient Rome because the domestic interiors were often small and claustrophobic and many Roman houses were very dark and didn’t even have windows, Romans used wall paintings as a way to visually open up and lighten their space.
- Consider this: it takes 570 gallons of paint to cover the exterior of the White House, located in Washington DC.
- Did you know that oil paints don’t dry, they rather harden owing to oxidation? This usually takes place over two weeks, with the paints ready to be varnished in roughly six months. For an oil painting to fully harden however, it can sometimes take years.
- And talking of oil paintings, did you know that the earliest known oil paintings were Buddhist murals found in Afghanistan’s Bamiyan caves dating back to the 7th century CE?
Here are some more interesting facts about paint!