2. Black
Artists & Illustrators|August 2018

AL GURY gets to grips with the paint colour’s history and explains how you can put it to good use

Al Gury
2. Black

Black, along with Yellow Ochre, Red Earth and white, is one of the oldest colours used in art. The earliest black paints were made from carbon, burned wood, burned bone, charred fruit pits and charcoal. These have acquired the names of Ivory Black, Carbon Black, Bone Black, Peach Black and so on. A second type of black paint comes from burned iron rich clay and is commonly called Mars Black. The first group is typically transparent, while the second is opaque.

This story is from the August 2018 edition of Artists & Illustrators.

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This story is from the August 2018 edition of Artists & Illustrators.

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