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Black, White, and Green

Date: 22-03-2023
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News, Tips & Info

Black and white occupy a contentious colour space. Both can be explained as an absence of colour yet all colours at once. Mix the three primary colours and you get black – no colour or all colours? Newton proved that white light is made from the full spectrum of colours, but white is also the blank space we make our marks on.


Black is less usual as a surface to paint on. While a white surface relies on reflecting light to create brilliance, black provides the strongest possible contrast to give maximum “pop” to your colours. The new Expression Black Canvas does just that: with an Expression Black Canvas, you’re working on a surface that already has a full tonal density, and this can allow you to achieve an outcome more quickly and effectively.

 

 

Expression Black Canvas is primed with a velvet black gesso suitable for acrylic, oil colour, and dry media. Use opaque colours for the most dramatic effects, as these will contrast most strongly with the black ground, while translucent colours will show the black through them, resulting in very dark glazes.


Of course, you can make your own black canvas too, with Black Gesso from Golden, Schmincke, and Pebeo available from Gordon Harris. Black canvas works particularly well as a base for metallic and pearlescent colours. These can be made by mixing gold, silver and copper with your existing colours at a ratio of around 5:1 (metallic to colour). While silver will create cool, pearlescent hues, gold acts like a yellow, creating metallic greens from blue, and copper behaves like an orange.

Due to their opaque character, paint markers such as Molotow One4all, make direct, bold statements on a black canvas, either alone or in tandem with acrylic colours.

 

 

Offering both black and white options to artists, Mingeishi is a natural paper with 4 deckle edges made by Awagami in Japan. Awagami’s Fujimori family has been making paper for 8 generations, producing “washi” papers from renewable, natural fibres for fine art, inkjet printing, crafts, and art conservation.

Although it is a very light 48gsm paper, Mingeishi is tough with a high wet strength. It has a smooth side and a more textured side, and is unsized, making it perfect for printmaking. Being so light, you can transfer sharp, detailed prints just by using your hand or a baren – no need for a press, and the durable surface is excellent for drawing too.


 

Being unsized makes Mingeishi and other Awagami papers too absorbent for the usual Western-style painting, but following sumi-e methods gives amazing effects. Give the paper a good wetting (I run it under a tap for a few seconds), then push it down onto a flat, non-absorbent surface. It will stay flat for painting wet-in-wet (or wait until damp for less bleeding) with inks or liquid acrylic. The resulting painting can be used as it is, or for collage, or chine collé printmaking techniques.

 

 

Let’s bring “green” into this black-and-white conversation with a very exciting development made in France by Pebeo: Studio Green. This new range of Pebeo primers is the first range of eco-designed acrylic primers made from 100% recycled raw material. By replacing petrochemical resin with 100% recycled resin, Studio Green generates 6 to 7 times less CO2 emissions than traditional binders, while providing the adhesion, strength, flexibility and durability that is completely comparable to traditional acrylic resins. The jars are also 100% recycled (not including lids), and recyclable.

How cool is that?!

 

Primming with Pebeo Studio Green Gesso increases the bright, reflective surface for more brilliant colours. Here we can see the difference in white between the factory gesso on the left and a few extra coats of gesso on the right. Not only does this increase the light bouncing back through your layers of colour, but by also filling the weave of canvas, the paint is able to be controlled to a much higher degree.


While not necessary, a coat of gesso on paper will increase your working time and the brilliance of colours by reducing the absorption of paint into the paper surface.

 

 

Studio Green Black Gesso has super covering power. One of my favourite uses for it is over the top of a “failed” painting. One coat is enough to completely obliterate the work and give me a lovely deep, velvet black surface to work on. Black Gesso has enough tooth for dry media such as coloured pencil, as well as providing a dense background to make my opaque acrylic colours “pop” like crazy!

 

For those painters who love texture, Pebeo Studio Green Modelling Paste can be trowelled onto canvas or panel, either pure or tinted with acrylic paint. Creating instant textures with Modelling Paste is a very quick method for impasto techniques, not only in reaching the desired amount of surface interruption far sooner but also by using a lot less actual paint to achieve this effect.


Studio Green Modelling Paste is perfect for sgraffito effects too and can be used as a substrate for acrylic and oil colour painting.


Whether your chosen surface is brightest white or deepest black, silky smooth or full of bumps and movement, whether it’s traditionally made or uses the latest green technology, this is the ground upon which every other creative decision follows. Choose it and use it to grow your artwork in exciting directions!

 

 

 

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