Using Blacks to darken a colour volume

[Blenheim]

I was wondering about the use of black.
I do a lot of flower paintings.
For example doing a red rose or red cherries to get that nice contrast I am thinking a little black mixed into the red would help.

Or just to get a colours shadows just use back to create volume.

thanks

Stewart

[budigart]

There is a story of two famous artists of old who were commenting on the pallet of the other. One said, I see you have black on your palette . . . I couldn’t paint with black on my palette. The other replied, I couldn’t paint without it.

The thing about blacks (especially ivory black) is that it is basically a very dark blue. Make a small string using white and you’ll see the blue appear. The point is that it’s quite common for black to change hue . . . black and yellw will make green, not a darker yellow. Black and alizarin will make purple, and so on.

If you find these hue shifts troublesome, you’ll have to add something to your black to move it more toward neutral. You can add a bit of burnt umber, which is basically a dark red; raw umber, basically very dark yellow; yellow ocher while will counteract the bluek. You could also try Williamsburg Italian Black Roman Earth, a black that is almost neutral to begin with.

[DaveCrow]

I use black in mixes.

It is well worth testing and experimenting with how your black and colours mix and respond to each other. The heat of creative passion is not the time to discover that your planned mix does not work at all.

When I use black for black I almost always add a little bit of either red or blue to it. Just enough to warm or cool it a bit and give it some life.

"Let the paint be paint" --John Marin

[Jonathan Patrick Bradley]

Black is useful for me. In moderation, I find it easier to balance a hue and get a direct value effect than leaving it out.

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[Don Ketchek]

It is well worth testing and experimenting with how your black and colours mix and respond to each other. The heat of creative passion is not the time to discover that your planned mix does not work at all.

An excellent idea.

Don

[Blenheim]

Thanks everyone

Maybe I am thinking more of neutralizing a colour.
You know a red rose petal gets darker and it recedes into the base of the flower.
So I was thinking of adding a little black to make this transition.

Stewart

[WFMartin]

From experience, as well as common sense, based upon the scientific behavior of color:

Black can be used to darken any secondary color, without that color changing its hue. The secondary colors are Red, Green, and Blue. (That’s why you can darken your rose petals effectively without your Red changing its hue.)

When Black is added to any of the 3 primary colors, the hue tends to change. This seems to be true of any Black paint. At times, someone will tell me that Black and Yellow create Green because the Black I have chosen has a “Blue bias”. I often tell them to select any Black of their choice, and see what happens. The answer is that they will still achieve Green by the mixture of Black and Yellow.

As someone already mentioned, Magenta and Black will mix to create some of the most useful lavenders and violets you could want. This is very handy when painting flowers, and I mix Black with my primary colors routinely, specifically for the hue biases that happen.

wfmartin. My Blog "Creative Realism"...
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[Michael Lion]

Common sense: of course black is very very useful for mixing dark colors!

It’s up to you, the artist, to make sure you mix the correct dark color. When black is mixed with another color, it usually makes a color that’s darker but also has less color saturation and often a different hue. So you need to counteract that or use a different other color to mix into black if that’s not the dark color you wanted.

[Blenheim]

From experience, as well as common sense, based upon the scientific behavior of color:

Black can be used to darken any secondary color, without that color changing its hue. The secondary colors are Red, Green, and Blue. (That’s why you can darken your rose petals effectively without your Red changing its hue.)

When Black is added to any of the 3 primary colors, the hue tends to change. This seems to be true of any Black paint. At times, someone will tell me that Black and Yellow create Green because the Black I have chosen has a “Blue bias”. I often tell them to select any Black of their choice, and see what happens. The answer is that they will still achieve Green by the mixture of Black and Yellow.

As someone already mentioned, Magenta and Black will mix to create some of the most useful lavenders and violets you could want. This is very handy when painting flowers, and I mix Black with my primary colors routinely, specifically for the hue biases that happen.

This is probably a dumb question, what is the difference between primary and secondary colours?
Red blue and green are secondary?
Is not red yellow and blue primary?
thanks

Stewart

[Ron Francis]

This is probably a dumb question, what is the difference between primary and secondary colours?
Red blue and green are secondary?
Is not red yellow and blue primary?
thanks

The largest gamut you can get with only 3 colours is with pigments that are closest to magenta, cyan and yellow.
Red, green and blue primaries has been taught in art schools, and is in fairly high profile books about colour, but it is incorrect.

Ron
www.RonaldFrancis.com

[Anonymous]

I love ivory black. I use it everywhere – flesh shadows, mids and highs, background, clothes etc. If it’s too blue, add a warm earth to make it more neutral. Even more warm earth – lovely deep shadows (I prefer my shadows opaque). Titanium white and ivory black makes a very pleasant blue. The list goes on…

[yakker0117]

Following.

[bobc100]

The largest gamut you can get with only 3 colours is with pigments that are closest to magenta, cyan and yellow.
Red, green and blue primaries has been taught in art schools, and is in fairly high profile books about colour, but it is incorrect.

The largest gamut you can get in a subtractive process (which mixing pigments closely resembles) is with colors closest to magenta, cyan and yellow. The largest gamut you can get with an additive process (which is how your tv or computer screen works) is using red, green and blue, and it makes much more sense to identify these as your primaries when discussing color theory. You were probably, however, referring to “red, yellow and blue” as mentioned in the previous post. This is clearly incorrect with respect to color theory, but it does turn out to be a very simple and effective method of predicting what you’ll get when mixing any two colors of paint.

[Anonymous]

People should stop fighting about the primary color terminology.
Neither concept is incorrect, and both sets of “primary” colors can be used for what they are best at doing. Pure colors are the best psychological primaries and cyan and magenta are the best mixing primaries. Yellow rules as the sole universal primary color. No matter how you think about it, or use it, it is decidely a primary color.

We employ the “largest gamut” primary concept for mixing the largest gamut of colors. But we use the psycological concept of primary colors for thinking about color mixing. Virtually every artist in history has done this, and every artist now reading this uses pure colors as their psychological primaries. The top color theorists in the world think in terms of the pure psychological primary colors for mixing colors, here is an example from the color theory forum from a post by Dr. David Briggs. The thread is discussing warm vs cool regarding ultramarine and Dr. B states that instead of thinking in terms of warm and cool for color and mixing, people should just simply think in terms of redder, bluer, greener, or yellower.
Now consider for yourself, why did he not say that people should think in terms of more or less cyan-ish or magenta-ish?
Because he is thinking in the simpler terms of red, yellow, blue, and green, the basic psychologically pure primary colors.
Cyan and magenta are respectively, greenish-blue and violet-red. They are simply not psychologically pure colors. They may be the strongest and most powerful mixers ever made, but when we think about using them in mixes, we think of what they contribute as their constituent psychological primaries.
Cyan contributes blue and some green, magenta contributes red and some violet.

[Ron Francis]

The largest gamut you can get in a [I]subtractive[/I] process (which mixing pigments closely resembles) is with colors closest to magenta, cyan and yellow. The largest gamut you can get with an [I]additive[/I] process (which is how your tv or computer screen works) is using red, green and blue, and it makes much more sense to identify these as your primaries when discussing color theory. You were probably, however, referring to “red, yellow and blue” as mentioned in the previous post. This is clearly incorrect with respect to color theory, but it does turn out to be a very simple and effective method of predicting what you’ll get when mixing any two colors of paint.

Oops, yes, you’re right. I think I’m just too used to thinking in terms of RGB (additive light). I did mean to say RYB primaries is an incorrect theory.

I agree with you Sid. RYGB are the psychological primaries and represent landmarks of pure colour. It’s interesting that, although yellow is a combination of red and green, we don’t say it is redish-green in a similar way that we can describe cyan and magenta as their components.

Ron
www.RonaldFrancis.com

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