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Black is very commonly used in art http://www.google.com/search?q=brush+painting http://www.google.com/search?q=brush+painting Impressionists had they fancy r

• icegreentea 16y ago
  Not just the impressionists. Most of the "classic" western painters and most people trained in those schools don't use black. One reason is that that black does not exist in nature. Or rather, almost never exists in nature, and these schools of art sought to "reality" or whatever. The rules regarding black in paintings still applies, if you're attempting to create a somewhat 'realistic' scene. Other wise, use of black should be done carefully. One of the things that pure black does in a coloured piece of art (ignoring grey scale and almost greyscale) is automatically flatten the image. You'll notice that most Chinese brush paintings actually use diluted black ink. The fact that many of them are basically greyscale or monochromatic just means they can get away with more black. Also, mixing in pure black into paint to darken a colour will almost always result in crappy looking shadows. Especially in pigment, but even in digital art. For example, if you tried to drop skin tone into a shadow by putting 20% opacity black it, it would look like crap. tl;dr, in art, black is to be used carefully to achieve a desired affect. same deal in design.