"Black will kill your colors."

[sidbledsoe]

Originally Posted by Einion

the use of black actually tends to produce results that are less dull than when a complement is used... despite its reputation to the contrary. Einion

Patrick continued the explanation that was exactly what the example I posted in post 37 page 3 (and Bill subsequently posted the example from which I derived mine)was all about.
From that original post:

Notice the reduction in chroma for black but it isn't fully neutralized until I reach black itself. But the complimentary mixed roughly half and half has neutralized the blue and then you get an orange brown as it approaches the complement. When I really want to knock back chroma I opt for the complement first, not black.

...now giving self a

[WFMartin]

I think that we are discussing a term here—the “Can Black kill your colors?” term—that may be quite akin to someone asking for a brown color to be made, “less brown”, for example. What does the term, “less brown” mean in practical, and correctible terms? Well, it usually means different things to different people.

“Less brown” could mean any of the following: darken it, lighten it, make it yellower, make it more neutral, make it less neutral, add red, or subtract red, and the list goes on and on. Like the “kill your colors” term, it is quite vague. And, how does one monitor just when a brown color has achieved the status of being “less brown”? I surely wouldn’t know. How does one know just when a color has been effectively “killed”? Sometimes, I wish I knew.

In simple fact, the term, “kill” has very little meaning, and when used with descriptions of color, often can take on quite a negative meaning.
When I operated a high end color scanner, we usually had to interpret such subjective descriptions from a client who wanted particular changes, but used terms that did not mean very much to the workers in our color department.

A typical color scanner has hundreds of buttons and dials for controlling color, and there really were times when I wished that I could have had a, “Brighten” button. Other buttons that I wished the scanner had were such things as a “Punch” button, a “Pizazz” button, a “Zing” button, a "Pop" button, or an “Impact” adjustment button It may also have been nice to have had a “kill” button. However, those things just don’t exist on a technical, color scanner, simply because they are all pseudo-descriptive terms, at best, used more by art directors, than by technicians who have an understanding of the 3 dimensions of color.

I don’t believe that using black in mixtures truly “kills your colors”. However, I do believe that an artist can “kill” his own colors, by using black (or any other color) inappropriately for the effect he is trying to achieve. Low chroma colors have not been “killed”; they simply exhibit the characteristic of being lower in chroma, and when used where they belong in a subject, can be quite useful, actually.

[Richard Saylor]

It's high time the notion that 'black kills color' is recognized for what it is. The point has clearly been made that there are many ways to lower the chroma of a color, the addition of black being one of them, which is often not as effective as adding the complement. In connection with this topic, the word 'superstition' comes to mind. There is no reason for artists to cling to non-rational concepts. People should just paint the way they want without imposing their demonstrably false ideas on the artistic community.

Just for the record, I use black only occasionally, but it is because of my painting technique, not because of the ludicrous notion that black kills anything.

[Einion]

I think these last two posts from Bill and Richard are as good a summation to the discussion as we could hope for so I've pruned off the last couple of days of pointless debate and we'll close the thread at this point.

Thanks to everyone for your positive contributions.

Einion