How to get black color from paints. Achromatic black - how to get it and is it possible

Prepare red, blue and yellow paint. Pure black is the darkest, but different black depths can be achieved by mixing other inks. In this case, the resulting black color will be influenced by the specific shades of red, blue and yellow paints used. Use your choice of oil, acrylic or watercolor paints.

• The use of cobalt yellow, madder rose and cobalt blue will create a soft black, while the combination of cadmium yellow, alizarin red and royal blue will give you a rich black.
• If you only have a basic set of paints, any shades of red, blue and yellow will do. Fairly common shades of red and blue are purple and cyan.

Today, it is almost impossible to imagine repairs without the use of paint. It is used not only for painting windows (as it used to be), but also for painting putty walls, painting wallpaper, concrete, facades, roofs, furniture and other surfaces. But what to do if you need to get a black color, because the paint is originally white?

Today, it is almost impossible to imagine repairs without the use of paint. It is used not only for painting windows (as it used to be), but also for painting putty walls, painting wallpaper, concrete, facades, roofs, furniture and other surfaces. But what if you need to get black color, paint is it originally white? It is really very difficult to choose the desired color, because it is not always possible to get the desired shade. All paints, whichever you choose, initially have a white or snow-white color, special tinting materials are used to give them the desired color.

Is it possible to tint the paint yourself?

As a rule, when buying paint, a special tinting machine gives the desired color, but if you do not need to match the shade to already painted walls or under the ceiling, then it is quite possible to get the black color yourself.

Please note that when applying paint over large vertical areas, the color will look somewhat richer.

What colors should you choose?

If you need to get perfect black color, paint should be snow-white, as it has the least unwanted pigment that can interfere with obtaining the desired shade. When buying a color scheme, the manufacturer should be taken into account. So, if you chose Optimist paint, the dye for tinting should also be from this series.

How much color should be added to get black?

Getting the desired shade of black is a delicate matter, even one drop can change the color, make it darker, more saturated. Lightening it back will be much more difficult. Therefore, do not rush, do everything gradually, applying drops. Stock up on small jars. Pour 100 ml of paint into a small bowl and add a few drops of color to it, be sure to write down the ratio. Initially add about 3 drops of color (in this case the color will be pale and desaturated), to achieve darker, brighter shades, continue to add drop by drop. When the color in the jar is about the same as it should be, paint a section of the wall and leave it until the paint is completely dry. Remember that on the wall, the black color you made will be somewhat brighter. It is necessary to evaluate the resulting color in daylight and in electric light.

If the resulting shade satisfies all your wishes, tint all the paint in the proportion that you used when tinting the paint in the jar. If you plan to paint large areas, then subtract 20% of the color as it will look brighter than a small test area.

If, however, the resulting color seemed somewhat pale or not black enough, add a few more drops of black color to the paint. Do this until the resulting color completely satisfies you. Do not be too picky about this work, treat it as entertainment, and then you will definitely succeed. If suddenly you accidentally poured more color, you can lighten it by using special additional materials.

It is easier to choose the black color of the paint and its shade if you use the Optimist-Elite color fan, as well as the tinting paste of this series. The ratio of paste per 1 kg of material is indicated on the fan or in the instructions for the paste.

Even a beginner knows that all shades can be made with just three basic colors - blue, red and yellow. You only need to know the rules for combining paints and the right proportions. But in practice, everything can turn out to be more complicated, and instead of the required color, a grayish, achromatic tone is obtained. It is also difficult to mix paints to find the right way to get black. Finished paints will be similar to it, but not 100%.

Black color features

Natural black (charcoal) is, in fact, the absence of color - scientists say so. This achromatic tone is the exact opposite of white. If the latter reflects the overwhelming amount of light rays, then black, on the contrary, tends to absorb them. There is no absolute black color in the world, while the darkest carbon vantablack is very close to the "ideal" - it absorbs 99.965% of the sun's rays, microwaves, radio waves. That is, this material reflects the minimum possible amount of light, therefore it is considered the blackest on Earth.

Black dye is made from various carbons, it is these substances that make it possible to obtain all types of paints of the desired tone. Most often used soot, graphite. Artists used to get matte black from burnt bone, and there was no darker tone. Today, the production of minerals is on stream, because in any art store you can buy paint, pencil, plasticine or a dark-colored felt-tip pen.

Color models and color synthesis

Scientists "brought" two basic color models, allowing you to create all sorts of tones and shades. Color synthesis involves the use of one of the models:

1. RGB, or additive. It implies the imposition of light rays on each other in a certain order, with a set intensity. The main range of colors fits into the standard (basic) - red, blue and yellow. Additive synthesis is used in monitors, but making black in the same way as the rest will not work. Black, according to RGB, is the absence of reflection.
2. CMYK, or subtractive. All tones are obtained by mixing paints in a physical way. Black is created by adding all other tones, and white in this system is the absence of color. This model is used in typography, its main tones are cyan (cyan), yellow, magenta (magenta).

Subtractive mixing method

This method of adding colors involves creating fewer tones than is possible with RGB. In theory, such a model involves getting black if you mix a number of other colors. But when the pigments are actually mixed, it is not a black tone that comes out, but a dark brown, with a brown glow, which will be very noticeable when diluted.

Therefore, in a printing house where the subtractive method is used, a key tone is added to this mixture - real black in finished form. No color-mixing ink can replace true black, as printers have long known.

Combining paints to make charcoal

If you read manuals for beginner artists, you can find an indication everywhere: no combination of colors will give a 100% black tone. But there are tables with information on which colors to mix in order to create the darkest possible shade, close to black.

The easiest way involves combining red, blue and yellow paints. Gouache, oil are best suited, and watercolor will be too transparent, will not give the necessary depth. Any base color set will work, although artists often use cyan, magenta, cadmium yellow, royal blue, and alizarin red.

The instruction is:

• put on a white palette a drop of each paint (take an equal amount of all colors) at a short distance from each other;
• gently mix the colors with a brush, spatula;
• mix the materials for at least 15 seconds so that there are no streaks, using circular motions.

If you need to lighten the black a little, a drop of white paint is injected into it. To give the tone of the natural sky, add a drop of blue or purple pigment. To draw a night forest, a little green is added to black, and a little orange is added to draw the rays of the sun on a dark surface. Of course, the expressiveness of such blackness will be less; for a rich tone, it is better to buy a ready-made color scheme in a store.

There are other methods to get the desired color:

• red + green;
• purple + brown;
• blue + orange;
• purple + yellow;
• blue + brown.

All the resulting tones will be close to black, but not ideal; upon closer examination, it is easy to reveal a “fake”. In the first option, it is better to take red alizarin and emerald. But the finished color scheme can still have a shade of one of them or become olive, purple, brown.

According to artists, the best color scheme is obtained by mixing blue and brown paint, regardless of its brand and specific type. At the same time, the more brown, the “warmer” the blackness will be. On the contrary, blue greatly “cools” the finished color scheme. Dilution of this color with water gives an excellent gray tone.

Shades of black

Professionals distinguish a lot of shades of the darkest dye. Not so long ago, artists denoted such tones:

• slate (with an admixture of gray);
• anthracite (with gloss);
• bovine blood (mixed with red).

Now colorists and artists create completely different colors, their range has seriously expanded. With the introduction of different colors, coal will not be so dark, but brownish, bluish or with a violet glow. Many shades are obtained by introducing white. Here are interesting variations of a dark tone:

• soft charcoal - to create it, mix turquoise, pink, yellow, add a drop of ready-made black;
• medium coal - combine ultramarine, reddish, light yellow, add a little blackness;
• black and blue - combine brown and blue, and the second color should be 2 times more.

Mixing colors is easy, and experimenting is always fun. In practice, you can choose the necessary proportions to make the required color scheme for the drawing - even a schoolboy can do it.

It is extremely individual and depends on how the human eye perceives the rays reflected from various surfaces. There are surfaces that do not reflect rays, but absorb them. When they are absorbed, a person sees. That is why black is called a "dead" color or "lack of color."

Therefore, the answer to the question of how to get black from paints will be the following: real black cannot be obtained by mixing any other shades of the spectrum. However, it is possible to create very dark shades that, in contrast to others, give the impression of black. To find out what paints need to be mixed to get black, you should turn to the theory of art and the psychology of color perception.

Color models and color synthesis

There are two models of color synthesis, that is, obtaining new colors and shades.

Additive - a model for obtaining color, based on the addition and superposition of rays reflected from the surfaces of objects. This model is used in monitors and screens, its main color range is RGB. Additive color synthesis is based on three main lights: red, green and blue. By superimposing and mixing these rays, all other shades are formed, except for black. In this model, black is considered to be the complete absence of reflection.

Subtractive - a model based on a mixture of physical pigments and paints. It considers white to be the absence of color. And black is obtained by mixing all the basic shades. So what colors do you need to mix to get black? In the subtractive model, the primary (or primary) hues are magenta, cyan, and yellow.

Subtractive mixing method

Compared to additive color synthesis, the subtractive model produces fewer shades. In addition, the theoretical or mathematical model of subtractive synthesis is fundamentally different from what is obtained in practice. For example, theoretically mixing three primary colors should result in black. However, in practice, this color comes out very dark brown.

The subtractive method is used in printing and polygraphy, where it is very important to achieve true black. In order to get it, a “key” is added to the three primary colors. It is from here that the name of the main range of the subtractive model is CMYK, where C is cyan (cyan, in Russian it is called blue or greenish blue), M is magenta (a shade of purple), Y is yellow (yellow), and K is key color (key color). In this range, natural black is key. Asking how to get black from the colors of the chromatic spectrum, the printers realized that no shade obtained could replace natural black.

Three primary colors

According to the theory of art by Johannes Itten, there are three primary colors, when mixed, all other colors of the spectrum are obtained. Itten singled out red, yellow and blue as the main ones. Subsequent theories determined that the ideal primary colors were purple (magenta), cyan (cyan), and yellow. It is they who are called primary - colors that reflect a larger spectrum and which cannot be obtained by combining other shades.

In fact, red and blue are not primary. They absorb more light than they reflect, but despite this, they are still often referred to as primary colors and are used to create the rest of the color wheel.

Note: White and black are not included in the spectrum and are called achromatic. How to get black from paints has always varied and depended on many theories that currently exist.

pure colors

According to the early theory, the pure colors were red, blue, yellow and green. It was believed that they could not be obtained by mixing other shades. Later, with the development of technology, it turned out that the three primary colors that cannot be obtained are magenta, cyan and yellow.

Modern color theory distinguishes three primary, three secondary chromatic and one achromatic - black. What colors to mix to get black varies. Everything works in comparison, from mixing primary hues to mixing red, blue and yellow, or even red and green.

The secondary colors are green, blue and red. Green is obtained by mixing yellow with greenish-blue. Magenta and cyan make blue. And by mixing purple with yellow, you can get red.

In theory, the question of how to get black from paints is solved by mixing the three primary colors in their ideal shades. These are cyan, magenta and yellow. However, it is practically impossible to get the perfect black by combining others. In typography and painting, natural black is used.

natural black

Black is actually the absence of color. The more light rays the surface of an object absorbs, the darker it appears. In nature, there is no absolute black color, but the darkest carbon Vantablack is as close as possible to one hundred percent absorption of light, it reflects only 0.035% of the rays.

The main natural pigments from which black paint is made are carbons. Among them, the main ones are graphite and soot. Artists at the dawn of painting thought about what paints should be mixed to get black, and came to the conclusion that black cannot be achieved. During the High Renaissance, painters mined black from burnt bone. It was the darkest available during the Renaissance.

Black and white are considered the actual absence of color. Therefore, the question of how to get black can be answered that it is possible to get only a color close to it by mixing several.

For the artist, this color means the darkest, and for scientists - the absence of color. Black is an achromatic shade that absorbs all light. According to the absorption of the light flux, it is opposite to white, which completely reflects the light and radiation falling on it. In the natural environment, there is a material close to it in tone - this is Vantablack dark carbon, which absorbs 99.96% of incident light and other radiation.

Back in the Renaissance, masters of painting tried to get black paint and concluded that it was impossible to make it from other paints. Therefore, they used burnt bones, from the soot of which they made paint of a matte black tone.

Today, black paint is made industrially from natural carbon pigments such as graphite and carbon black.

In practice, 2 main color models are used:

• RGB- additive, the basis of which is the superposition of rays reflected from the surfaces of objects. It is used in computer monitors, contains the main colors: R-red, G-green, B-blue. The remaining colors and shades are obtained by overlaying.
• CMYK- subtractive model, which is based on the physical mixing of pigments, with white being the absence of color, and pure black obtained by mixing cyan (C-blue), magenta (M-magenta) and yellow (Yellow) tones, K (key color) - key. This system is used in the printing industry and printer printing.

What colors to mix?

To get a black color that is close to ideal, you can go by mixing paints of the following colors:

• Red and green- the resulting tone will be close to the desired one (in fact, it turns out to be very dark, and if you look closely, it is not quite ideal).
• Blue, yellow and red- if you take these 3 primary colors, then mixing them will also allow you to get a fairly saturated color scheme.
• D Additional colors (brown, purple, blue)- you need to mix them in small quantities, then you get an approximate color.

You can use for mixing any paint intended for drawing or household purposes: acrylic, gouache, watercolor and oil. If there is no ready-made dye of a classic tone, then there are a lot of options for how to make black paint from others.

To obtain a pure color, you will have to work hard and select the necessary proportions, gradually adding different colors.

On the video: what colors to mix to get black.

There are many shades that differ slightly from the classic black, which will allow the artist to add originality to his work. Historically, the following shades have developed:

• Slate - essentially it is a dark gray, the name comes from the slate-aspid, which was used earlier in the manufacture of the school board.
• Caramasy - synonyms "black", "black -haired".
• Anthracite is a highly saturated color with some sheen.
• Bull blood is a black and red color scheme.
• Bardadym - the name of the king of black suit in the game of cards.

Modern shades of black differ from those previously used:

• Soft black - to get it, you need to mix the following colors: turquoise, pink and yellow, sometimes a little white is also added.
• Medium - pink, ultramarine and light yellow paints are mixed for it.
• Saturated color it is possible to make not only from the three primary colors (chromatic), but also with the help of red, yellow and blue colors.
• Blue-black - obtained by mixing brown and dark blue.

Many shades of dark and light gray can be made by experimenting with adding white paint or adding a little water. Experience will show what colors and shades are obtained.