Mixing guide
How to mix a black without using black
A mixed black has a color in it, which is what makes it read as a dark rather than as a hole.
Black out of a tube is one flat thing. A black you mix has a temperature, and in a painting that temperature is what makes the dark sit in the same world as everything around it.
The standard route is a dark blue with a dark earth: ultramarine with burnt umber, or phthalo blue with burnt sienna. Adjust the ratio and you slide from a black that leans blue to one that leans brown, which in practice means from a cold dark to a warm one.
This also solves a practical problem. Tube black is extremely strong, so a little contaminates everything it touches. A mixed dark behaves like the colors it is made of, which is to say predictably.
The mixtures
Each one worked out on a real palette with the spectral model. The number after the mixture is how far it lands from the target: under 2 you cannot see the difference, under 4 it does not matter in a painting.
Cool black #1E2430
Night, cast shadow under a blue sky.
8× Phthalo Blue +1× Ivory Black +1× Alizarin Crimson (permanent)
10× Phthalo Blue +3× Burnt Umber +1× Quinacridone Rose
Full wash.
4× Ultramarine +1× Yellow Ochre
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
Warm black #2A2119
Dark wood, a shadowed interior, a black coat in warm light.
7× Burnt Umber +3× Ivory Black
3× Burnt Umber +1× Phthalo Blue
Full wash.
3× Ultramarine +2× Yellow Ochre
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
Near-black neutral #26262A
As dark as you can go while keeping a trace of color.
7× Phthalo Blue +3× Ivory Black +1× Alizarin Crimson (permanent)
10× Phthalo Blue +5× Burnt Umber +1× Quinacridone Rose
Full wash.
5× Ultramarine +2× Yellow Ochre
This palette cannot quite reach that color with 3 pigments in one mixture. What you see is the closest it gets, which is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon trying.
Worth remembering
- Decide first whether this dark should be warm or cool. That single decision does most of the work.
- Mixed darks want to be darker than they look on the palette. A dark in a pile always reads lighter than the same dark spread thin.
- If you do use tube black, treat it as a color rather than as an absence of one. Ivory black is a warm brownish black and makes a surprisingly natural green with yellow.
Your paints, your photo
These mixtures assume the palettes above. Tick off what you actually own and pick the color straight out of your reference instead.