A blacker black part 2. As I wrote in part 1, Semple’s coworker asked me if I had already made something with my coal paint. I was working on a few pieces, sent some intermediate pictures and worked like mad to demonstrate outcomes. I managed to finish them a couple of weeks ago.
But it’s difficult to show the result. A photograph does not reflect how dark, how matt that paint is. Therefor I also made videos, but they’ve been made with the same small camera (no reflex). It continuously wants to add light.

Paint with coal from Zolder

I made this painting with paint I made with coal from the last Belgian coalmine, Zolder; and some Black 2.0. I attached a little ceramic ‘coal vessel’ as in my ceramic Saint Barbara’s. In real life, with moderate light (*) and from a little distant, you don’t see there’s something attached to the canvas, it just seems to be a circle.
I explain which paints I used in the different parts of this canvas, in the video below. Please select the 1080HD quality.
(Click here to watch the video directly in YouTube)

My blackest black piece of art so far

is this Saint Barbara, entitled “In the name of my father, my grandfather and their friends” f2/07, Acylics and coal on earthenware, An Vanderlinden, 2017.

You don’t want to know how many hours it took me before it looked like this. Black 2.0 is very matte, and very difficult to ‘enlighten’. The difference between plain acrylic and Black 2.0 is huge. To get transitions between light and dark, I mixed Black 2.0 with plain black paint, and with matte medium. But wet paint is shiny, so the result was never predictable. Layers, lots of layers until I had the desired effect. 

So the “luminous” parts in this work are plain black paint, diluted with ordinary mediums. Only for a few accents I used gloss medium, and some coal on top, but you can see that kind of details in the short video below (Click here to watch the video directly in YouTube – please select the 1080HD quality)

Black. I have a lot to say about it, so to be continued. But not now: I really need to work in my studio.

(*) If you put a spotlight on it, it seems to be grey. So there’s still a lot of work todo before Black 2.0 comes near nanoblack.