I have never used this colour before in my painting and have to keep practising saying the name - Phthalocyanine Blue - (never mind just trying to spell it) but I've just ordered my first tube and can't wait to try it! This deep intense blue seems to be somewhere in tone between Ultramarine and the precious and madly expensive Lapis Lazuli, the treasured pigment made from the gemstones mined in the mountains of Afghanistan, beloved of the old masters including of course the golden Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer and having never actually read Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier before and with all of our art galleries and wonderful bookshops closed at the moment I've just discovered that there was no better time than now. I didn't even know we had it - found it on a bookshelf upstairs and out of the blue (!) began to read it and I'm really glad I did. It was an immersive and visually evocative piece of time travel that transported me to Delft in the 1660s, along the Oude Langendijck to the house, the front door with the bench outside, the hallway and the narrow stairs taking me up and inside the studio of Vermeer to the setting for all those extraordinary domestic scenes which he painted where the figures are bathed in that beautiful glowing light that streams in through the open window. A really memorable experience indeed and I just didn't want it to end!