Black is Beautiful! Part 1

​John Singer Sargent: 
Charcoal portrait sketch of Kenneth Grahame

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    One of the many topics that I am looking forward to exploring here on my new Blog is: Color and Color theory! This is such a wide ranging topic… it is hard to know where to start! But we’ll have many opportunities for interesting posts. So let’s start with probably the oldest and widest used color of all, Black!

 Mark Rothko (1903-1970) ‘Black’

    Most People don’t consider Black a color 'Black is the absence of color!’ they say. But not me! As a painter, I see black as another rich and varied pigment. It can be created by mixing at least three of the darker (transparent) primary-color pigments, or even just two of the darker secondary-color pigments. Black is essential for creating ALL of the Shade colors (by definition), and along with White it makes up the most versatile and constructive color of all the color families: The family of Grays…  and all of the Toned colors as well! Not just a mixture, It’s also a pure pigment! And several kinds of pigments as well, with a wide range of useful qualities.

 Pablo Picasso,  Guernica 1937

“Picasso’s choice of black and white for his painting intensified
the drama of it, giving the painting a picture-like quality
as if it were part of a photographic record. It also highlights the essence of war being evil, reducing life around it ​into
​dichotomous composites of good and evil.”
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    Ivory Black is the most popular Black, originally made by burning ivory, now by carbonizing bone (versatile but it has a weak tinting strength). Lampblack (good for making grays as it shifts towards the bluish/purple) and Carbon Black, made from the soot of charring petroleum, (not so good for mixing but very dark and permanent as a body-color over larger areas). Vine Black is made of carbon by charring vegetable or wood products. Carbon pigments make weak mixtures but are good for outlining and the sticks are good for drawing, and in its powdered dust form it is very fine and light, good as a pounce for transferring cartoon patterns for signs, murals and fresco paintings. Mars Black is an iron oxide, so it leans toward the red, not a very rich or dark black, but it mixes well with transparent colors and doesn’t ‘Go to mud’ so easily as the carbons do. Payne’s Gray is a particularly rich mixture of Black with Ultramarine and a little ochre (good to know when it shifts all of your mixtures towards green). Black primers are very useful as a block-out layer and black gesso makes a great ground for darker compositions or to make your opaque colors ‘pop’!

The Black Paintings: Frank Stella (American, born 1936) 

Photo: Hollis Frampton, 
The Secret World of Frank Stella 
​[painting Getty Tomb,
unpublished print], 1958–1962,
printed 1991, gelatin silver print,
​Addison Gallery of Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts
(gift of Marion Faller, Addison Art Drive, 1991)

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Parisian bad-man FUZI, paints a mural on the side of
Boomtown Brewery in sunny Los Angeles, California
​He covered the wall with a host of characters
in his trademark style.
https://ironlak.com/fuzi-paints-large-ignorant-mural-dtla/

​      ...And of course Black Enamel ‘Rattlers’ make great
        ‘Paint Bombs’ for quick attacks over rough surfaces
         and hard to reach Trophies.

​Coming soon...

​Black is Beautiful!  Part 2:
Black vs Purple

Black is Beautiful!  Part 3:
Black as the absence of Light,
Black-Body Radiation, Black-Lights,
Black Holes, Anti-Photons,
Black Matter, Black Energy

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