Did you know that there are different sorts of black color?
Historically black color was made from different natural pigments which would give it different characteristics.
Some of the materials used prior to create black are, charcoal, coal, ivory, lamp tar, jet (stone)…
These blacks give off warm and interesting tonal ranges, for an instance ivory black can go from greenish to brownish, to black. Try experimenting to see what feels with you next time when you are looking for particular color balance when using black.
Wonderful example of fascination with black color is a french artists Pierre Soulages who created a body of work exclusively using black color in his attempt to capture a brilliant contrast or coexistence between darkness and light.
In modern times we use synthesised pigments for creating more pure black such as Mars Black.
Synthetic pigments used to create black are great advancement in color production, they create pure blacks that are not ranging in extra tonalities then variations of black, for some they can feel cold but they can be great for particular types of situations and expressions.
Synthetic pigments eventually led to creation of Vantablack, a super-black color that absorbs up to 98% of light. Vantablack is unfortunately now exclusive to single person (Anish Kapoor) use and has started a friction in the art world.
To counter this Stuart Semple decided to create his own version of blackest black, now in version 3.0 as of this writing and offered it to the world for use and development.
So next time when you look at black I hope you may find that is more important color than you thought before.
read more: Ancients & colour blue
