Those itty bitty little particals of colour that make painting possible are amazing. History, technology, culture, we can see them all just by learning about pigments. I love it.
I hope one day to play with some of the older styles of painting to see what it was like to paint in the past. And to see techniques to get around the limitations of individual pigments like vermilion fading in the video...but not in the old dutch masters paintings...they knew how to work with the materials to overcome these problems. And yet, painters today say it's impossible.
Although, I admit, I'm glad to live in an age where most of the toxic pigments are either extinct or too expensive for the likes of me.