Or Lamblack Is A Smoke Black Being The Soot Procured By The Burning

: ON THE NEUTRAL, BLACK.

of resins or resinous woods. It is a pure vegetal charcoal of fine

texture, not quite so intense nor so transparent as the black made from

ivory, but less brown in its pale tones. It has a very strong body that

covers readily every underlay of colour, works well, but dries badly in

oil. On emergency, it may be prepared extemporaneously for

water-painting by holding a plate over the flame of a lamp or candle,

and adding gum to the colour: the nearer the plate is held to the wick

of the lamp, the more abundant and warm will be the hue of the black

obtained; at a greater distance it will be more effectually charred, and

blacker.



Mixed with French blue or cobalt, lamp black gives good cloudy grays,

which are useful for the shadows of heavy storm clouds. With French blue

and this black alone various beautiful stormy skies may be represented;

the contrast of the blue causing the black to assume, if desired, a warm

tone in shadows. For like purposes, the black with ultramarine ash

affords a very soft hue, and with light red and cobalt in different

proportions yields silvery tones most serviceable. To the dark marking

of murky and dirty clouds, a compound of lamp black and light red is

particularly suited; while a mixture of the black with cobalt and purple

madder is adapted for slate-coloured sunset and sunrise clouds. French

blue softened with a little lamp black is fitted for mountains or hills,

very remote; and the same blue and black with rose madder meet their

tints if nearer. In seas the black is useful with raw Sienna and other

colours; while, whether in storm or calm, vessels and boats may be

painted with tints of lamp black, madder brown, and burnt Sienna,

varying in degrees of strength according to the distances. Lamp black

alone, or with French blue, cobalt and purple madder, emerald green, or

rose madder, is good for rocks; and for dark foreground objects when

mixed with madder lake and burnt Sienna. With aureolin the black

furnishes a sober olive for foliage, and with rose madder a fine colour

for the stems and branches of trees. Compounded with light red, it is

suited to the first general tones of the ground for banks and roads; and

with yellow ochre or madder red, to parts of buildings and cattle. A

very eminent miniature painter recommends for hair tints, lamp black,

Indian red, and burnt Sienna. Being a dense solid colour, this black

must be used sparingly to avoid heaviness.



Hitherto confined to painting and engraving, lamp black has lately

refuted the assertion that there is nothing new under the sun by making

its appearance in photography. By a method which combines the fidelity

of that art with the permanence of prints, there is produced a species

of photographic engraving, so to speak, having lamp black or carbon for

its colouring matter. Indeed, in this 'Autotype' process, as it is

called, any other durable pigment or pigments may be used, and a

photographic picture thus obtained. In copying the works of artists,

especially, the mode promises to be of value, inasmuch as by its agency

the same pigments may be made the colouring matter of the reproduction

as are employed in the original. If this be in sepia or bistre, the copy

can be autotyped in those colours; or if a red chalk drawing be required

to be multiplied, the proofs may be in red chalk, the copy when

produced to the same scale being scarcely distinguishable from the

original. In like manner, any single colour of the artist's palette is

applicable without restriction or limitation, so that not only are every

line and touch rendered absolutely, but the very pigment used in the

original is found in the copy. Moreover, as the pigments are quite

unchanged by the action of the other agents employed, the resulting

colour of the print is determined once for all, just as the artist mixes

those pigments on his palette for his picture. As extending the use of

lamp black and permanent pigments in general, this brief digression on

Autotypography may be pardoned in a treatise on colours.



TTITLE MIXED BLACK.



Black is to be considered as a synthesis of the three primary colours,

the three secondaries, or the three tertiaries, or of all these

together; and, consequently, also of the three semi-neutrals, and may

thus be composed of due proportions of either tribe or triad. All

antagonistic colours, or contrasts, likewise afford the neutral black by

composition; but in all the modes of producing black by compounding

colours, blue is to be regarded as its archeus or predominating colour,

and yellow as subordinate to red, in the proportions, when their hues

are true, of eight blue, five red, and three yellow. It is owing to

this predominance of blue in the constitution of black, that it

contributes by mixture to the pureness of hue in white colours, which

usually incline to warmth, and that it produces the cool effect of

blueness in glazing and tints, or however otherwise diluted or dilated.

It accords with the principle here inculcated that in glass-founding the