Elbaite, Paprok, Afghanistan

Mineral Matters #359

I recently had one of those dang annoying things that come round once a year.

On the bright side, I get vouchers to go buy art materials. 😁

This year, I also treated myself to a set of coloured pencils that I hadn’t seen before, Derwent Procolour, wax-based pencils, but ones that are a bit harder. I thought that they were new, but apparently, they have been around for about six years or so.

Now some of you know that I like to create art on black backgrounds. It makes the crystals pop more than on a white background. But some coloured pencils (and some paints) don’t play well with a black background. Fortunately, these do.

This is one of a few pieces of mineral art completed over the last few weeks.

The elbaite tourmaline created was based on a photo that I took of the actual specimen in Tucson in 2014. It was offered for sale by Stonetrust, and previously belonged in the Harvard University collection. The specimen is about 80mm tall and was marked as having repairs (x3). Reconstructed is perhaps a better term. It did look good. The asking price ten years ago was US$10,000. 😲

Below: Elbaite, Paprok, Afghanistan. Coloured pencil on black A4 card.