Since most of the information about any subject we depict is conveyed to us by the value structure, being able have a good dark and a range of attractive grays is very important. There appears to be two separate processing systems in the visual part of the brain that are as far apart anatomically as hearing and vision, yet they both deal with vision. One is nicknamed the “where” system (value) and the other the “what” system (color). Here is a wikipedia article on the subject. This adds some scientific reasons for the idea of first planning the value structure of a painting and then adding color.
There’s a wonderful story, perhaps a myth, about the painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1790-1867) who, when teaching, asked his class to make a value scale with 25 steps. They complained. They had been asked to make 5 step value scales, sometimes 7 step value scales, but never 25. They protested that the discrimination between each step is too difficult. Ingres stepped out of the classroom for a moment and returned with a value scale that he had made for himself with 100 steps! His students stopped complaining. I should mention here that photoshop in its Lab color space also uses a value scale of 100 called “L”, so Ingres was not so crazy just ahead of his time. Even 100 steps is nothing. Our visual system is said to be able to distinguish 1000 levels of light in one viewing situation. So having paints that can make grays and darks is very important.
gray scale common in art stores
“black” paint
Although one might be tempted to simply include a black paint on our palette, there are a few reasons not to do so. All our carbon based black watercolor paints dry to a very matte finish. They dry with what looks to me like a white haze over them. They are also fairly difficult to use because they show brush stokes very easily. The problem boils down to their not looking like the rest of the paints. The matte finish can be remedied to some extent with two or three glazes of pure gum arabic which cuts down the scattering of light. The rubber industry is the biggest user of carbon blacks not the watercolor paint manufacturers. PBk 6,7,8,9 are all carbon based. They go by the names of ivory black, bone black, lamp black, furnace black, vine black, etc. There is also a graphite based black (PBK 10) which understandably has a graphite or pencil like sheen to it which seems more natural in drawings. Black iron ore (PBK 11), magnetite, or its synthetic equivalent, produces a black that in watercolors has been called “magnetic black” because the pigment is used in the ink on checks that have machine readable numbers. The “jetness” or “blackness” of these pigments is less than pure black, more like a very dark gray.
Pigment Black 1 is based on a synthesized aniline chemical which probably rates it’s “number 1″ because it is thought to be the oldest synthetic organic pigment (1860). Holbein’s “Peach Black” is a mixture of carbon black and PBk1 and as a result is very dark and velvety. There is some question of the fastness, fading in light, of PBk1. The original Peach Black was made from burning peach pits (and thus a carbon black) and was on quite a few palettes in the old days. There are some references to it being mixed with zinc oxide and diluting to a green shade, but Holbein’s version does not. However, Perylene Black (see below) still does.
The interesting exception among the blacks is Perylene black (PBk31) which looks like a black in undiluted form and is labeled as one as a pigment. However, it tints (dilutes) to a dull but distinct green (hence it sometimes is called Perylene “green”, for example by Winsor Newton, although it is PBk31). The point here is that on a palette it can do double duty as a dark and a green which, with a limited palette ,seems like a good idea. However, to get a black from Perylene black watercolor you have to put it on in a very heavy brushstroke which makes it look leathery or “bronze-ish”, just what is always cautioned against with all the other watercolor paints.
In general carbon black paints have relatively small size particles which work better at a greater dilution with water before using than most other watercolors. The good news is they can be washed and blotted off the paper easily. The bad news is the same characteristics mean that, if you put down a passage of black and let it dry, even a slightly wet brush will make it bleed into the next passage. Most watercolor when it is dry, will tolerate a glaze of another watercolor. Black will not.
There are warning about using any of the black paints in mixtures with other paints to the effect that they make the result dull and colorless.
convenience darks
If you dont want to use a black, there are the convenience darks like Payne’s gray (carbon black with blue or violet undertones), Indigo (black with blue undertones — originally made from a plant), Sepia (black with dull orange undertones– originally made from squid ink) and Davy’s gray (which has a greenish tint — originally made from greenish clay). They are better looking than carbon black alone, but they still take a place on the palette that you might want to give to another paint.
There is also a paint called “neutral tint” which is dark gray. Often when I’ve checked a manufacturers pigment ingredients, it has always turned out that neutral tint and that manufacturers Paynes gray have the same ingredients presumably in different proportions. These ingredients are red, yellow, and blue of some sort, that is variations on the primary colors. That’s a common formula for mixing a gray, for example Charles Reid’s favorite gray uses Carmine, Yellow Ocre, and a blue (Cerulean or Prussian). By mixing it yourself you can tilt the color toward tan, blue, or violet. The more common mixture for gray is from three transparent paints: gamboge (a yellow), quinacradone rose, and cobalt blue.
Many watercolorists like to mix a gray on the paper so that there is some variation of warm and cool colors in the same gray passage (called by them “vibrations” and by some as “optical mixing.”)
In gouache there are three “lines” of gray: cool gray, neutral gray, and warm (or “French”) gray with at least three values in each type of gray. Gouache or body color is more commonly used by illustrators, but other than that I have no idea why there is not the equivalent choice in watercolor paints.
mixing a dark alternative
After all that information about blacks and convenience darks, I think most watercolorists prefer to mix a dark. Winsow Homer’s dark was Prussian Blue and Venetian Red. (Although he did have Payne’s Gray on his palette.) Ultramarine blue and burnt umber or burnt siena is another combination. Indigo and a cool red make a strong black. A strong green like Pthalo green (PG7) and cool red make a good dark. One of the reasons for mixing is, of course, you do not have to reserve a spot on a limited palette for a black or convenience dark. More importantly by varying the amounts of the two mixing paints or mixing the dark and/or black on the paper there can be interesting variations in the passage. This would also be accomplished by using different pairs for darks to avoid monotony –which is the subject of Chapter Two.
WHITES
Whites can serve to describe a white object or to lighten (tint) a paint. The use of white in a mixture will dull (gray, desaturate) the paint and cool it. These colors cannot be produced by dilution with water.
The classical way to produce a white passage or line in a watercolor is to “reserve” the white paper for it, that is leave the paper completely untouched. This can be done by carefully painting around the area. And the classical way to lighten the tone of a paint is to dilute it with water and let the white paper show through the wash. There are some artists who consider themselves purists who would only support reserving paper or diluting with water in watercolor.
A second but related method to produce a white color is to “mask” (cover) the area to be white and remove the mask at the end of the painting session. The classical method is to use liquid frisket which is much like rubber cement. Another similar approach is to use a “wax resist” from either a waxy crayon as Sargent did or using a candle, paraffin, or a waxy colored pencil etc. For a fine line you can lay wax paper over your drawing (wax side down, of course) and use a sharp pencil and enough pressure to transfer wax to your paper but taking care to not puncture the paper in so doing. You cannot see wax so you have to be careful to place your marks exactly where you want them. Frisket, on the other hand, can be seen because it has been colored for that purpose.
To remove the wax resist after your painting is done, you have to place the painting face down preferably on brown paper and run a warm iron over it. To remove frisket you can rub it with your hand and pick up a corner and them pull it off or use a material specifically designed to remove rubber cement.
The problem with frisket is that it produces very hard edges and often glob-like shapes because of how the thick latex-like product acts on the paper. These marks are both unattractive and fairly easily recognizable and, some watercolor artists don’t used it for these reasons. The white area left after friskit has been removed can be painted into to change the shapes and the edges to something more attractive.
One technique used to reserve paper without a masking agent or a “resist” is to initially vignette every object, that is leave a “frame” of untouched paper around it. This can be outside the contour line of the drawing or inside the contour drawing. You do not paint up to the line and, if you wet your paper beforehand, you do not wet it up to the contour line of the drawing. Once you have your initial paint down, you can then make modifications particularly if you do so before the first wash (which left the vignette) dries.
In general, pure white passages do not work well because the information they send about the nature of the light would suggest that there is a very bright pure white light very close to the subject. Most artists either warm or cool their whites. Fortunately most classical watercolor papers are not brilliant white. Highlights often take on slight tint of the complementary color to their backgrounds with the exception of bronze and other like metals with have highlights similar to the metal color.
It is often common to have to “reclaim” the whites which you have accidently covered with some paint. This can be done with gesso or gouache (and special white paint sold to exactly match your brand watercolor paper) if you are not intimated by the artificial separation and prohibition of gouache and watercolor so often proclaimed by watercolor artists.
There are two white paints offered by watercolor paint manufacturers:
1. zinc oxide (PW4) which Winsor Newton name Chinese White in 1834. it is often used in convenience paint mixtures like naples yellow hue which has a reputation for fading, incidentally. This is a very dense type of zinc white produced in a special way. One manufacturer makes a white from titantium white and calls it Chinese White.
2. titanium white (PW6)
(There is also a buff titanium white which is dull brown and works more like a gray, and Antwerp Blue is usually made from Prussian Blue by adding “blanc fix” a white barium sulfide compound which, as far as I know, is not used anywhere else in watercolor paint.)
These paints show no drying shift (that is get lighter as they dry). They are very lightfast, and moderately staining. Zinc white is more opaque and used to cover other paints. It, however, dries more translucent that it looks wet. Bruce McEvoy’s lightfastness tests serendipitously discovered that Chinese White gets more opaque after 4 to 6 weeks of light exposure.
In general, white paint is not mentioned as being part of an artist’s watercolor palette and is not put out on a palette like other colors, but it is does seem to be used in mixing although, as I have said, the classical instruction to lighten watercolor paints is to dilute them with water and let the white paper show through.
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