Fun Facts About Painting

1. The color purple became associated with royalty because at one time only aristocrats could afford the expensive pigment. During Roman times, it took 4 million crushed mollusk shells to create one pound of purple pigment.

2. The White House is white because of the original lime-based whitewash that was used to protect its porous stone surface. It gets painted every year.

3. The Greek philosopher Plato is credited with the discovery that you can mix two different paint colors together to produce a third color.

4. The first interior painting was done roughly 40,000 years ago in what is now France by prehistoric cave dwellers, who employed stencils in some of the work and even “spray-painted” by blowing paint through hollow bird bones.

5.Various paint colors can help the body heal itself. For example, red can often help depressed people regain vigor, while green has been shown to relieve stress.

6. In the Middle Ages, manuscripts were “illuminated” with paint made from ground semi-precious stones and egg yolks.

7. By the time the Sydney Harbor Bridge has been painted end to end the process must be started again.

8. Among the Aztecs, red pigmented paint was regarded as more valuable than gold.

9. The Golden Gate Bridge has always been painted the same color since it was completed in 1937. The name of the color is International Orange.

10. Many Native American tribes used black paint to signify life and yellow paint to signify death.

11. It took Michelangelo only four years to paint the famous ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the 1500s, but it took 20 years to restore it in the late 1900s.

12.The “color wheel” is older than the United States. It was developed by Sir Issac Newton in 1706.