Home Forums Explore Media Oil Painting Black prefference ~ please

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 30 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #990581
    bellawolf
    Default

        Just wondering peoples preference for black straight out of the tube please?

        Warm, cool dark, greys, lightest, opacity….

        Thanks :)

        #1181112
        forsooth
        Default

            Cool: Payne’s Gray

            Warm: Van Dyke Brown

            Neutral: Chromatic Black (used rarely)

            All are from Gamblin. I also have Ivory Black and Mars Black, but I never use them.

            #1181114
            yellow_oxide
            Default

                I don’t have the same blacks from a lot of different brands, but I do have a lot of different black pigments from various brands. So this isn’t so much a brand comparison but a pigment comparison. Note though that the same pigment from different brands may look different. These are all single pigment.

                Warm
                Davy’s Gray (PBk19, Williamsburg) is my warmest by far.

                Cool
                Graphite Gray (PBk10, Williamsburg) is my coolest by far. It’s also slightly iridescent.

                Grey/Neutral
                Charcoal Black (PBk8, Blue Ridge) is so close to neutral, to me anyways, that I don’t think there’s any better. It’s also the weakest tinter by far, maybe tied with Davy’s Gray.

                Lightest
                Graphite Gray above is the lightest straight from the tube, but the Charcoal Black and Davy’s Gray are the weakest tinters and the easiest to make subtle light greys with.

                Transparent
                Not all that many transparent blacks, but the Davy’s Gray above is the most transparent that I’ve seen. The Charcoal Black above is probably second, but by a good margin.

                Opaque
                Any Mars Black, such as German Earth (PBk11, Williamsburg) is very opaque. Slate black (PBk19, Williamsburg) is also opaque.

                Other
                Atrament Black (PBk31, Schmincke Mussini) is the only greenish black that I know of.

                I posted some black swatches and commentary over on this thread- link

                Here’s the images, but keep in mind that I wasn’t very exact when mixing them with white. It’s more of a comparison of what they look like tinted rather than a tinting strength comparison. Also note that the lighting in the photos isn’t the best.



                #1181100
                Red 9
                Default

                    My favorite is Old Hollands Vine Black {PBk8}. It’s not very strong and is semi transparent.

                    #1181105
                    Dcam
                    Default

                        After Yellow Oxide’s post….what is there to say?

                        Complete!!!!

                        but…….I make my own black with VanDyke and Prussian Blau.

                        derek

                        Here is an aside; Bright red can be darkened in value with ivory black very successfully. My prof. at NYU: Idele Weber ( a noted Woman American Photorealist) told us this and we balked….but it really works.

                        #1181101
                        Ron Francis
                        Default

                            Lamp black, Pk7, is the darkest and most opaque black I have used.

                            Ron
                            www.RonaldFrancis.com

                            #1181115
                            yellow_oxide
                            Default

                                I recently got some Lamp Black, PBk7, from Rembrandt. I haven’t gotten around to actually using it in a painting.

                                Just now I compared some swatches of it with German Earth and the Lamp Black was significantly darker. It was also very opaque, though I don’t know for sure which was more opaque. The lamp black did kind of seem to be more.

                                #1181099
                                llawrence
                                Default

                                    I have no idea if it is warm or cool, but: Magnetite Genuine from Da Vinci. Low-tinting, not too dark, and wonderful for skin tones.

                                    Oh, and for a richer black, Bone Black from Rublev. La!

                                    #1181094
                                    Anonymous

                                        My favorite is Winsor Newton ivory black, which gets bonus points for being an oxymoron. It is more than black enough for me. It’s cool, leans to blue in tints.
                                        Lamp black is kind of an oxymoron if you really think about it.
                                        :D

                                        #1181121
                                        Anonymous

                                            I’m opposed to preferences for blacks.

                                            #1181110
                                            NancyMP
                                            Default

                                                I have Ivory black and Lamp black, from various manufacturers. The Ivory is cool and the Lamp is warm. I don’t use much black; I usually mix it from other colors.

                                                Nancy http://nancyparkfineart.com
                                                All human beings are dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. - Jack Kerouac

                                                #1181093
                                                WFMartin
                                                Default

                                                    I have discovered that tubed black–any tubed black–when mixed with the primary colors of Magenta and Yellow, can create come of the most magnificent hue shifts imaginable. I use these routinely for painting delicate, and subtle colors for many flower paintings.

                                                    Tubed black, when mixed with Primary Yellow yields beautiful, subtle, dull green, and when mixed with Magenta, creates really excellent lavenders, and purples, which I use quite often. White in the mix adds to the gamut of subtle, pastel colors that can be created with a tubed black and a primary color.

                                                    I have, and do use, Ivory Black, Mars Black, and Lamp Black, in both Grumbacher and Winsor & Newton. Among these 3 tubed blacks I haven’t noticed enough color bias, one way or the other to shake a mahl stick at.;) Granted, there IS some bias, but insignificant enough for me not to even consider it very much. However, I have noticed that Lamp Black has about twice the tinting strength as Ivory Black. That is significant, and it can either be an advantage, or a disadvantage, depending upon the specific uses to which such blacks are being put.

                                                    I make my slightly, off-neutral, dark color for creating my grisaille underpainting by mixing approximately equal volumes of Ivory Black with Raw Umber. Once, I tried using Lamp Black for the same purpose, and discovered that I could have used about half of the amount of Lamp Black in the mix, compared to Ivory Black.

                                                    Other than that, I’m convinced that one could place about any tubed black on my palette, without my having noticed from what tube it came, and I would certainly be able to use it without much extra effort. In my case, I normally mix tubed black with other colors, anyway, during routine use, and I automatically compensate for whatever slight color bias it may exhibit by simply increasing, or decreasing amounts of other colors in the mix with that black.

                                                    For most of my normal, flower paintings, I probably reach for Mars Black more than the other blacks. I’m not sure just why, and I couldn’t begin to prove whether it exhibits a “warm” or a “cool” bias, merely because that doesn’t affect my use of it in actual applications.

                                                    wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
                                                    https://williamfmartin.blogspot.com

                                                    #1181113
                                                    SSB
                                                    Default

                                                        Blue Ridge charcoal is a neat black, I also like Gamblin chromatic for landscapes. I use mars black too from Blockx and ivory black from Winton or WN.

                                                        #1181104
                                                        kevinwueste
                                                        Default

                                                            Lamp black, as it appears others have testified to above, is the only black, when dark is required! (slight hyperbole applied)

                                                            The “Lamp” in the title refers to lamp oil, and as it is burned, the carbon that results becomes the pigment for this paint. It’s kind of useful to have the darkest black ready ( and, say, the brightest white also ready, at the other end of the spectrum).

                                                            -Wueste

                                                            i draw, paint and teach | my voice is hoarse | my shoulder hurts.
                                                            Talent is really a capacity for a certain type of learning of knowledge and a consuming interest in the facts that contribute to that knowledge~ Andrew Loomis
                                                            http://www.kevinwuesteart.blogspot.com
                                                            "kevinwueste" on instagram

                                                            #1181116
                                                            yellow_oxide
                                                            Default

                                                                Just to highlight what I mentioned before about the same pigment being different from different sources, here’s a post on Natural Pigment’s forum from when I asked about lamp black-

                                                                Carbon blacks are designated as PBk7 or Pigment Black 7 with the exception that lamp black is designated as PBk6 or Pigment Black 6.

                                                                Carbon blacks are manufactured by a wide variety of processes. [B]Furnace blacks[/B] are produced by burning oil in refractory chambers of furnaces. The flames carrying the carbon particles are released as smoke. [B]Channel blacks[/B] are made by burning natural gas in many small flames impinging against a metal surface; the soot is collected by scraping the metal surface. [B]Lamp blacks[/B] are made by the incomplete combustion of creosote or oils in steel pans and collecting the product through settling or electrostatic collection chambers. [B]Thermal blacks[/B] are produced by decomposing hydrocarbon gases in hydrogen and carbon. [B]Acetylene blacks[/B] are made by the thermal cracking of acetylene.

                                                                Lamp blacks are similar to furnace blacks in particle size, oil absorption, tinting strength and color but contain only 80 to 95 percent fixed carbon. Thermal blacks are coarse with low tinting strength and low oil absorption. Acetylene blacks are very fine pigments with very high oil absorption.

                                                                So yeah, lot’s of different ways of making PBk7. There’s potential for confusion here though, since either PBk6 or PBk7 are called “lamp black” by various paint makers.

                                                                As near as I can tell, according to both him and the ASTM, “lamp black” is technically PBk6, while all other carbon blacks made from other methods of collecting soot from the burning of different materials are PBk7 and should be called “carbon black.” Something like that…

                                                              Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 30 total)
                                                              • The topic ‘Black prefference ~ please’ is closed to new replies.