Why I like to avoid using black

While I was painting the Lovely Skies painting today, I thought of a fun subject to talk about. Today we're going to talk about the color black, more broadly we'll talk about all tones of grey, but I wanted to share why you should avoid using these colors (or lack there of). 

When it comes to traditional painting (oil painting, acrylic painting, and watercolor painting) I was taught to never even bother using black, and use white as sparingly as possible. This is good advice; the moment black and white paint is introduced to a canvas the chances of paintings getting muddy or looking dead increase exponentially. This applies to digital painting as well, but in a different way (though I find the solutions can be similar to what you would do in a traditional painting setting). 

Before going further, I find it important to point out in digital painting if pure black is in your final piece, that's fine, but it's all about how you get there. Let's talk about what black is in digital painting.

Black in Digital painting is when your RGB values are all 0. Beside muddiness, and a feeling of flatness in the final piece, what does it mean to have a 0 value on your RGB scale?

Think of how blend modes work. All colors in photoshop have a numerical value, and as these numerical values pass through other colors underneath it (which are also numerical values). It's then sent through mathematical formulas to come to a final numerical value which we see on the screen. For example; a multiply layer will take the RGB value numbers of one layer and multiply it with the RGB numerical values underneath it (multiply doesn't actually work exactly like this, but it's an easy way to understand where i'm going). Same principle applies to the saturation slider.

The thing to keep in mind is that a value of 0 cannot be multiplied or divided. In the end you'll only get 0. This makes black really hard to manipulate in photoshop. 

In the above example I have a vivid light layer on top of a black background. The vivid light layer is a very light yellow, and it doesn't effect  the final colors we see. 

So what do we do?

a trick that I've learned from painting with watercolor is if you want grey or even black, you don't actually use black pigment, you mix your darkest blue and your darkest brown. You end up with a grey that is somehow saturated and vibrant. It's a trick that I use for digital painting as well.

I spread around dark blues and dark reds on the canvas. The two colors cancel each other out so I get a canvas that is neither cold nor warm. The RGB values are close to 0, but not quite. It gives me just enough to play around with. Let's look at the previous vivid layer example in this setting;

The blend mode actually affects the colors! In the end, staying away from black just gives me more options. It gives me more ways to move and bend colors around. Once i'm done painting, I might even move the levels until parts of the canvas are pure black, but it's something I work up to and only apply when I'm done working the colors.

A quick note on greys;

Greys are similar to black in that the red and green values are 0, but the black value is not 0. This is one of the reasons why it's hard to save a painting from grey. If things get too de-saturated and dead looking, the saturation slider just won't do anything

even cranking the saturation up to 100 won't change any colors. The solution is simiar to how you treat black; avoid as much as possible.

Always remember to give yourself something to play with