Two Black Watercolor Paint, five mixed darks, and the honest answer about when each one earns its place
Introduction
Black is the most argued-about color in watercolor. Some painters refuse to put it on the palette at all. Others reach for it in every painting. Both camps will tell you they are right.
I use black. I also mix my own darks, and most of the time the mixed version is what ends up on the paper. The useful question is not whether black belongs in watercolor. It is which black, for which job, and how much.
This article covers the two Black Watercolor Paint I own and have painted with, five dark mixes I make from paints in the same two sets, three alternatives to watercolor black entirely, and the techniques that keep dark values from flattening a painting.
Everything here comes from two student-grade sets: the Pentel Arts 24-tube set and the Van Gogh Botanical Selection, 24 pans. I chose to work from those on purpose. They are affordable, widely sold, and they are what most people reading this will actually have.
1. Why Black Has a Bad Reputation in Watercolor
Watercolor earns its character from transparency. Light passes through the pigment, hits the white paper underneath, and bounces back out. That return trip is what makes a watercolor glow in a way that opaque media cannot.
Black interferes with that trip more than any other color. Applied heavily, it stops light at the surface. The area goes flat and slightly dead, and the eye reads it as a hole in the painting rather than as a shadow.
That is the real complaint behind the advice to avoid black. The problem lives in how it gets used, not in the tube.
A second issue is temperature. Shadows in the real world are rarely neutral. A shadow on a warm pink petal is a cooler pink. A shadow under a green leaf carries green in it. Black watercolor paint has no temperature of its own, so it drains the color it touches instead of deepening it.
That is also fixable, and section 3 is where it gets fixed.
2. The Two Blacks I Actually Use
2.1 Pentel Black
This is the straight black in the Pentel Arts 24-tube set. It behaves the way most student blacks behave.
What I noticed painting with it:
At full strength it is dense and opaque. It covers. That makes it useful for the one job where you actually want opacity, which is a small, deliberate accent: the dark center of a flower, a cast shadow under an object, the darkest line in a composition.
Diluted, it turns grey rather than staying black, and the grey leans slightly cool and slightly chalky. On a textured paper that chalkiness shows more.
Where it earns its place: small areas, high contrast, final details.
Where I avoid it: large washes and anything that needs to stay luminous.
2.2 Van Gogh Neutral Tint 715
Neutral Tint is not technically a black. It is a dark neutral built from a mix, sold ready-made. That distinction matters in practice.
What I noticed painting with it:
It stays more transparent than the Pentel black at the same dilution. Light still gets through, so a shadow painted with it reads as shadow instead of as a gap.
More importantly, it mixes into other colors without killing them. Adding Neutral Tint to a green gives you a deeper green. Adding Pentel black to the same green gives you a muddier, greyer green.
This is my default for shadows, and it is the one I reach for without thinking.
Where I avoid it: when I need genuine opaque black for a small accent, because it is not dense enough.
2.3 Side by side
| Pentel Black | Van Gogh Neutral Tint 715 | |
|---|---|---|
| Transparency | Low | Moderate |
| Diluted appearance | Cool grey, slightly chalky | Soft grey, cleaner |
| Mixed into a color | Tends to dull it | Tends to deepen it |
| Best for | Small opaque accents | Shadows, layered darks |
| My usage | Occasional | Daily |
3. Mixing Your Own Darks
This is where watercolor rewards a little extra effort, and it is the section I would read first if I were starting out.
A mixed dark carries temperature. You decide whether the shadow leans warm or cool, and you decide how far from neutral it sits. A black watercolor paint gives you one answer to every question.
Here are five mixes I make from the two sets, with nothing extra bought.
3.1 Ultramarine 506 + Burnt Sienna 411
The classic, and the one worth learning first.
Ultramarine is a warm blue. Burnt Sienna is a warm orange-brown. They sit close to opposite each other on the color wheel, which is why they cancel into a dark instead of making mud.
The ratio is the whole point:
- More Ultramarine: a cool, slightly blue-black. Good for shadows on anything in daylight, and for the shadow side of cool-colored objects.
- Equal parts: the most neutral dark of the five. Close to a true black at full strength.
- More Burnt Sienna: a warm brown-black. Good for shadows on warm surfaces, wood, skin, dried leaves.
One mix, three usable darks, and you control which one you get.
3.2 Prussian Blue 508 + Burnt Umber 409
Deeper and cooler than the first mix. Prussian Blue is a strong staining pigment, so a small amount goes a long way, and the result can get very dark without becoming opaque.
I use this when I want a dark that still feels like a color rather than an absence of color. It works well for night scenes and for the deepest parts of foliage.
Be careful with the proportion. Prussian Blue will take over if you let it.
3.3 Ultramarine 506 + Vandyke Brown 403
Softer than both of the above. Vandyke Brown is a gentle, slightly grey brown, so this mix lands in a muted, slightly dusty dark.
This is my choice when a painting is already quiet and a hard black would shout.
Both sets happen to include a Vandyke Brown, the Pentel tube and Van Gogh 403 pan, and they are not identical. The Van Gogh version runs lighter and a little greyer. Worth swatching both if you have them.
3.4 The three-primary mix
Red, yellow and blue together produce a dark. In the Pentel set: Red, Yellow and Ultramarine. In the Van Gogh set: Permanent Red Medium 371, Lemon Yellow 254 and Ultramarine 506.
It takes more adjusting than a two-color mix, because three pigments give you three ways to go wrong. But it produces a dark that is unmistakably built from the painting's own palette, which means it sits in the work as if it belongs there.
3.5 Complementary pairs
Any two complements will neutralize toward dark. Beyond blue and orange, try:
Purple + Yellow: a dark that leans soft and slightly violet
Hooker's Green 645 + Carmine 318: a dark green-black, excellent in foliage
For a fuller explanation of how complements neutralize each other and why some pairs go muddy while others go rich, the article on How to Mix Watercolor Neutrals: Browns, Grays and Muted Tones covers the mechanism in detail.
4. Alternatives to Watercolor Black
Sometimes the right answer is a different material entirely.
4.1 India ink
Highly pigmented, dries fast, and gives a dense black that watercolor cannot match. Depending on the formulation it is waterproof once dry, which means you can wash watercolor over it without the line bleeding.
I find it better than watercolor black for galaxy and night-sky paintings, where you want a deep black in some areas and a deep blue in others.
4.2 Black marker
Easy to control and useful for solid shapes or graphic lines. Available in permanent and water-soluble formulas. The water-soluble ones can be pulled with a wet brush to create a gradient, which is worth knowing.
4.3 Gouache
Opaque, matte, and able to cover what is already on the paper. Useful for final details and for corrections. Mixing black gouache with watercolor gives you a semi-opaque middle ground that neither medium produces alone.
5. Four Ways to Use Black Without Flattening the Painting
5.1 Dilute it into greys
The simplest fix. A heavily diluted black becomes a soft grey that works for subtle shadows and light transitions. Most of the damage people blame on black comes from using it near full strength.
5.2 Mix it into other colors
Black added to a color darkens it without changing the hue, if you use a small amount. Some combinations worth swatching:
- Black + blue: a deep, nearly navy dark
- Black + green: a dark olive
- Black + red: a wine tone
The amount matters more than the pairing. Start with less than you think.
5.3 Reserve it for accents
Small dark marks do a disproportionate amount of work. A contour here, a shadow there, and the eye follows them. Large black areas do the opposite, pulling attention and holding it until nothing else in the painting gets looked at.
5.4 Build it in transparent layers
Instead of mixing the dark you want and applying it once, apply a lighter version two or three times, letting each layer dry. The result is a dark with depth in it, because the layers underneath still show through.
This takes longer. It also looks better.
6. The Exercise That Teaches the Most
Take a sheet of watercolor paper and make a reference chart.
One row for each of the two black watercolor paint, at full strength, half dilution, and heavy dilution.
One row for each of the five mixes, with the ratio written next to it.
Then a final row: choose one color, and darken it five ways. With Pentel black, with Neutral Tint, with its complement, with a darker analogous color, and by layering the same color over itself.
Let everything dry completely before judging it. Watercolor lightens as it dries, often more than you expect, and a comparison made while wet will mislead you.
Write the names and the proportions beside each swatch. Six months from now, when you want a specific dark, you will have your own reference instead of someone else's.
If your watercolors are drying lighter than intended and that is affecting these swatches, Why Does Watercolor Look Faded When Dry? explains what is happening and how much to compensate.
7. What I Have Not Tested
Being straight with you about the limits of this article.
There are blacks in watercolor beyond the two I own. Lamp Black is described as a dense neutral black leaning slightly blue. Ivory Black is described as warmer and more translucent. Lunar Black is known for heavy granulation. Mars Black is dense and opaque, and more common in acrylic than in watercolor.
I have not painted with any of them, so I am not going to tell you how they behave. When I add them to my palette I will test them properly and update this article with what I find.
What I can tell you is that two blacks and five mixes cover far more ground than most paintings need.
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| Datails with Ink Pen |
Conclusion
Black is not the enemy of watercolor. Undiluted black applied over a large area is.
If you take one thing from this article, make it the Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna mix. Learn what it does at three different ratios, and you will have a warm dark, a cool dark and a neutral dark that all belong to your painting's own color family. That single mix will replace black watercolor paint in most situations you encounter.
Keep the black watercolor paint black for what it is genuinely good at: small, deliberate, opaque accents where you want the eye to stop.
For the other end of the value scale, How to Use White in Watercolor: 8 Options and When to Use Each covers the same territory from the opposite direction, including why white behaves so differently from black in a transparent medium.
And if you want the underlying framework for why warm darks and cool darks read so differently in a painting, Watercolor Color Theory: Warm, Cool and Neutral Tones Explained lays out the principles.
Happy painting.
