Painting on Location in Acrylics


Using Black Pigment
painted on panel, sealed with water based polyurethane


BLACK PIGMENT DULLS COLOR

I tried to get unity using black pigment but it just doesn't happen. It dulled the background hill by creating a dull pall. Each time I would lighten I would add enough color to give it hue that didn't look black but I couldn't hide it, even in the dark colors.

Sure it has a lot of contrast and if you only used it in the darker colors you could keep it from turning the lighter colors gray. In the end it was not worth it. The darks do not look natural.

Painting with black pigment and "the great deceiver gray" is a different and less complicated way to paint. Eugene Delacroix (1798 - 1863) the great Realistic French painter called gray the enemy of artists.

One doesn't have to think of the opposite transparent color to add while making any shadow color because it is automatically black, just like a camera. Just black with another color in it. The black shows, I'll never do it again.

It's better to paint with the three transparent primary colors and mix the darker colors.

A painting using black pigment.

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