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Fine painters will almost never use black. The pigment in black paint is very deadening and harsh, it's difficult to work with. It's much better to take the tim

by city41 16y ago

Fine painters will almost never use black. The pigment in black paint is very deadening and harsh, it's difficult to work with. It's much better to take the time and create dark hues from the rest of the color wheel. A standard exercise in color theory classes is to create black from the primary colors. Most people end up with brown, but a beautiful, rich black and nearby shades can be accomplished, and it's worth the effort. It's an entirely different ball game though when you switch from a subtractive color system (which is what painting is, the primaries being cyan, magenta and yellow) to an additive one (which a computer monitor is, with the primaries being the well known RGB). In an additive system dark hues are only accomplished by removing light instead of adding pigment, so the problems a painter faces with black don't exist quite in the same way. So comparing website/app design to Monet is a tiny bit far fetched. It seemed like a lifetime ago but I used to live and breath this stuff, even got a degree in painting. I guess it wasn't entirely useless :)

lmkg 16y ago
Do any of the problems or concerns that painters have with black art apply to using white on a monitor?
- city41 16y ago
  That's an interesting question. My hunch is to say no, as color on a monitor is so pure and perfect. It's essentially digital while a painting is analog, really analog. How the pigments that form the various colors interact with each other varies so much. Even just take red for example, there's red paint made with cadmium, some with iron oxide, others with plants, pyrrole, etc. All these different types of red act so differently. Red on a monitor is just defined by 8 bits, typically. But with all that said, this was another lifetime ago for me. I've been a programmer for over a decade now and haven't seriously painted in about that much time, so I'm not the expert I wish I was anymore. I should get back into it.
  - abp 16y ago
    Hm, but problems exist from a programmers view, because you get blind by starring at shiny white editor windows constantly. Also, in my opinion, to much white can make a good design look too offensive on a monitor. Decent gray, for example, does much better as a background color, i think?
icegreentea 16y ago
Digital paintings still shy away from #000000 black in paintings. It still often looks wrong. It'll flatten out just about anything you put it on. The relationships between colours stay the same in RGB as in pigment. It's just that colours mix differently. Adding true black to your real life paintings has this huge possibility of totally blowing up any colours near it if it mixes in by mistake. Digital well... that's up to the artist's self imposed limitations. That said, all the rules about black disappear once you talk about greyscale images. As some sister comments point out, while the relationship between colours remain the same in RGB as pigment, the role the relationships and colours play are different from on a website, to print, to a painting. I also suspect that sub pixel rendering could screw around with off black fonts.
abp 16y ago
At least, you were able to put the argument token from painting away, by applying your skills as a painter. Thank you.
blahblahblah 16y ago
To further confuse non-painters, although painting is done with a subtractive color system and, technically, cyan, magenta, and yellow are the primaries of such a system, painters don't actually mix their colors from a palette of cyan, magenta, and yellow. If you ask a painter what the primary colors are, they will tell you yellow, red, and blue. A typically painter's palette will consist of a couple hues of each of the primaries + titanium white (except in watercolor, where the natural white of the paper is typically retained instead of using a white pigment). For example, you might use cadmium yellow light, yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, and phthalo blue for your palette. Mixing from a limited palette such as this helps to give the painting a color scheme that is harmonious (and is worthwhile practice if you're a designer who wants to really develop a good feel for color harmony in your designs). A common mistake beginners make is to load up their palette with every tube color they can find at the local art supply store. The end result is a painting with colors that clash like a bad 1970's leisure suit and/or ugly dull muddy color that doesn't pop at all.
demallien 16y ago
Fine painters will almost never use black. The pigment in black paint is very deadening and harsh, it's difficult to work with. It's much better to take the time and create dark hues from the rest of the color wheel. A standard exercise in color theory classes is to create black from the primary colors. Most people end up with brown, but a beautiful, rich black and nearby shades can be accomplished, and it's worth the effort. Really? I have to admit that this surprises me. Black and white aren't on the same dimension as the hue. Playing with just the primary colours doesn't allow you to change the lightness of the mix. Depending on the lightness of your primary palette, you're going to produce some shade of grey, not black... That said, I'm not actually trying to contradict you, I'm just stating my understanding of the theory - I'd love it if you can explain to me where I've gone wrong! :)
- city41 16y ago
  This might be a bad analogy as I don't bake, but I imagine it's sort of like a really high end confectioner making an elegant dessert. When it comes to sweetening it they have many choices. They probably won't choose HFCS or stevia, because those two choices are rather "viral", they tend to invade everything else and dominate the flavor. Black pigment is sort of like that too. It has a deadening effect and often conflicts with the color palette an artist is going for. Yes red+black will equal a dark red, but kind of a flattend out muted one. Red+green+a smidge of the right blue can often yield a better dark tone that matches the palette and intent of the painting better. It also depends on the painter. Monet was all about exploring light and understanding light. For him the colors he chose were vital as was his ability to mix color, so oil paint was the natural choice for him. But take Lichtenstein, color was very secondary to his message and he even wanted bad color in a lot of ways. He painted in pure black pigment all the time, he even used acrylic paint which Monet would have scoffed at. I don't think anyone would try to suggest Lichtenstein was less of an artist, just his needs/message were different. When I first posted here and said "fine painter", I was refering to painters where the paint and pigments themselves are vital to their message, like Monet.
- stan_rogers 16y ago
  "Black" isn't. There are very dark browns and blues. Despite what the grandparent posting said, fine painters actually do use black, but not to produce darks (at least not in oils); the most common use for lamp black (the most neutral of the black pigments) is to create the iris colour for blue eyes in oil portraiture. For deep shadows, though, black pigments are very problematic in that it is extremely difficult to control the transition out of darkness. Because painting is a subtractive medium, one can obtain nearly the same level of darkness using other dark pigments in combination. An "old masters" chiaroscuro typically uses burnt umber plus a warm blue, such as aquamarine, for the great lake of "blackness" from which everything else emerges. Each of those pigments alone prevents the reflection of a rather broad segment of the spectrum, and together they approach true blackness. That, then, allows the artist to manage the transition out of darkness into either a warm or cool tone smoothly by decreasing the amount of the unneeded tone before lightening. Painters who use the Impressionist pallette will never go anywhere near that level of darkness -- their shadows will generally be just below a mid tone using the main colour of the object, cobalt or aquamarine blue, depending on the warmth or coolness of the main tone, and the complementary colour of the main tone, all in juxtaposition rather than as a mixture. The apparent darkness comes from contrast. The same principle, though, is used to create shadows in classical painting techniques (but with mixture) -- a darker version of the main tone plus the complement and often a touch of blue. These rules apply to oil painting. Pure pigments in oil are darker out of the tube than you might imagine due to the optical properties of the oil (which is why white paints are sold in huge tubes). In a medium like soft pastels, which doesn't encapsulate the pigment in a continuous film of a binding medium, blacks are used to create the bottom end of the spectrum out of necessity. Even then, though, a pure black is almost never used.

by city41 16y ago

lmkg 16y ago

Do any of the problems or concerns that painters have with black art apply to using white on a monitor?

city41 16y ago
That's an interesting question. My hunch is to say no, as color on a monitor is so pure and perfect. It's essentially digital while a painting is analog, really analog. How the pigments that form the various colors interact with each other varies so much. Even just take red for example, there's red paint made with cadmium, some with iron oxide, others with plants, pyrrole, etc. All these different types of red act so differently. Red on a monitor is just defined by 8 bits, typically. But with all that said, this was another lifetime ago for me. I've been a programmer for over a decade now and haven't seriously painted in about that much time, so I'm not the expert I wish I was anymore. I should get back into it.
- abp 16y ago
  Hm, but problems exist from a programmers view, because you get blind by starring at shiny white editor windows constantly. Also, in my opinion, to much white can make a good design look too offensive on a monitor. Decent gray, for example, does much better as a background color, i think?

icegreentea 16y ago

Digital paintings still shy away from #000000 black in paintings. It still often looks wrong. It'll flatten out just about anything you put it on. The relationships between colours stay the same in RGB as in pigment. It's just that colours mix differently. Adding true black to your real life paintings has this huge possibility of totally blowing up any colours near it if it mixes in by mistake. Digital well... that's up to the artist's self imposed limitations. That said, all the rules about black disappear once you talk about greyscale images. As some sister comments point out, while the relationship between colours remain the same in RGB as pigment, the role the relationships and colours play are different from on a website, to print, to a painting. I also suspect that sub pixel rendering could screw around with off black fonts.

abp 16y ago

At least, you were able to put the argument token from painting away, by applying your skills as a painter. Thank you.

blahblahblah 16y ago

To further confuse non-painters, although painting is done with a subtractive color system and, technically, cyan, magenta, and yellow are the primaries of such a system, painters don't actually mix their colors from a palette of cyan, magenta, and yellow. If you ask a painter what the primary colors are, they will tell you yellow, red, and blue. A typically painter's palette will consist of a couple hues of each of the primaries + titanium white (except in watercolor, where the natural white of the paper is typically retained instead of using a white pigment). For example, you might use cadmium yellow light, yellow ochre, cadmium red medium, alizarin crimson, cerulean blue, and phthalo blue for your palette. Mixing from a limited palette such as this helps to give the painting a color scheme that is harmonious (and is worthwhile practice if you're a designer who wants to really develop a good feel for color harmony in your designs). A common mistake beginners make is to load up their palette with every tube color they can find at the local art supply store. The end result is a painting with colors that clash like a bad 1970's leisure suit and/or ugly dull muddy color that doesn't pop at all.

demallien 16y ago

Fine painters will almost never use black. The pigment in black paint is very deadening and harsh, it's difficult to work with. It's much better to take the time and create dark hues from the rest of the color wheel. A standard exercise in color theory classes is to create black from the primary colors. Most people end up with brown, but a beautiful, rich black and nearby shades can be accomplished, and it's worth the effort. Really? I have to admit that this surprises me. Black and white aren't on the same dimension as the hue. Playing with just the primary colours doesn't allow you to change the lightness of the mix. Depending on the lightness of your primary palette, you're going to produce some shade of grey, not black... That said, I'm not actually trying to contradict you, I'm just stating my understanding of the theory - I'd love it if you can explain to me where I've gone wrong! :)

city41 16y ago
This might be a bad analogy as I don't bake, but I imagine it's sort of like a really high end confectioner making an elegant dessert. When it comes to sweetening it they have many choices. They probably won't choose HFCS or stevia, because those two choices are rather "viral", they tend to invade everything else and dominate the flavor. Black pigment is sort of like that too. It has a deadening effect and often conflicts with the color palette an artist is going for. Yes red+black will equal a dark red, but kind of a flattend out muted one. Red+green+a smidge of the right blue can often yield a better dark tone that matches the palette and intent of the painting better. It also depends on the painter. Monet was all about exploring light and understanding light. For him the colors he chose were vital as was his ability to mix color, so oil paint was the natural choice for him. But take Lichtenstein, color was very secondary to his message and he even wanted bad color in a lot of ways. He painted in pure black pigment all the time, he even used acrylic paint which Monet would have scoffed at. I don't think anyone would try to suggest Lichtenstein was less of an artist, just his needs/message were different. When I first posted here and said "fine painter", I was refering to painters where the paint and pigments themselves are vital to their message, like Monet.
stan_rogers 16y ago
"Black" isn't. There are very dark browns and blues. Despite what the grandparent posting said, fine painters actually do use black, but not to produce darks (at least not in oils); the most common use for lamp black (the most neutral of the black pigments) is to create the iris colour for blue eyes in oil portraiture. For deep shadows, though, black pigments are very problematic in that it is extremely difficult to control the transition out of darkness. Because painting is a subtractive medium, one can obtain nearly the same level of darkness using other dark pigments in combination. An "old masters" chiaroscuro typically uses burnt umber plus a warm blue, such as aquamarine, for the great lake of "blackness" from which everything else emerges. Each of those pigments alone prevents the reflection of a rather broad segment of the spectrum, and together they approach true blackness. That, then, allows the artist to manage the transition out of darkness into either a warm or cool tone smoothly by decreasing the amount of the unneeded tone before lightening. Painters who use the Impressionist pallette will never go anywhere near that level of darkness -- their shadows will generally be just below a mid tone using the main colour of the object, cobalt or aquamarine blue, depending on the warmth or coolness of the main tone, and the complementary colour of the main tone, all in juxtaposition rather than as a mixture. The apparent darkness comes from contrast. The same principle, though, is used to create shadows in classical painting techniques (but with mixture) -- a darker version of the main tone plus the complement and often a touch of blue. These rules apply to oil painting. Pure pigments in oil are darker out of the tube than you might imagine due to the optical properties of the oil (which is why white paints are sold in huge tubes). In a medium like soft pastels, which doesn't encapsulate the pigment in a continuous film of a binding medium, blacks are used to create the bottom end of the spectrum out of necessity. Even then, though, a pure black is almost never used.