Koh-i-noor Bone Black Tempera Paint, 16 ml

Koh-i-noor Bone Black Tempera Paint is a deep, versatile black with a unique warm undertone, made from a traditional carbon pigment. This 16 ml tube contains a high-quality, water-based tempera formulated for exceptional coverage, durability, and a rich matte finish. Designed for absorbent surfaces, it shares the distinctive tempera characteristic of being re-wettable after drying. A staple in both educational and professional settings, Bone Black is essential for creating deep shadows, strong lines, mixing a range of grays and dark tones, and providing a powerful contrast in any composition.

Product Overview & Key Features

• Traditional Bone Black Pigment: Produces a deep, intense black with a subtle warm (brownish) undertone, as opposed to the cool, blue undertone of ivory or Mars black.
• High-Quality Tempera Formulation: A professional-grade, water-based paint with a finely ground pigment emulsion, offering smooth application and a velvety matte finish.
• Re-wettable & Flexible: Can be thinned with water while wet and, characteristically, re-activated with water even after drying on the palette, allowing for corrections and economical use.
• Excellent Coverage & Opacity: Provides strong, opaque coverage with excellent hiding power, making it highly effective for lines, solid areas, and covering underlying colors.
• Durable & Lightfast: Offers good resistance to fading and forms a durable, abrasion-resistant film when dry, suitable for artworks that will be handled.
• Superior Mixing Properties: The key color for creating a wide spectrum of shades, grays, and dark tones. Mixes with white to create grays and with other colors to darken them and reduce their intensity (create shades).
• Versatile Surface Compatibility: Designed for water-absorbent surfaces such as paper, cardboard, wood, and primed canvas, ideal for a wide range of projects.
• Practical 16 ml Tube: Packaged in a convenient tube for controlled dispensing, easy storage, and reduced waste compared to jar formats.

Primary Uses & Benefits

• Creating Depth & Shadow: Essential for painting deep shadows, adding dramatic contrast, and creating a sense of volume and three-dimensionality in artworks.
• Mixing a Range of Grays & Dark Tones:
  • With White: Creates a scale of warm, natural grays, from near-white to charcoal.
  • With Other Colors: Used sparingly to darken and create "shades" of any color (e.g., dark green, dark red). This also slightly mutes the original color's intensity.
• Graphic Lines & Outlines: Perfect for drawing crisp lines, adding details, lettering, and creating graphic elements in illustrations and posters.
• Ideal for Education & Professional Work: A fundamental color in school art programs for teaching value (light/dark) and is also valued by professional artists and illustrators for its warm, natural black quality.
• Correcting & Covering: Its high opacity makes it useful for covering mistakes or unwanted marks in tempera paintings.

Recommended Surfaces

• Paper, drawing paper, and watercolor paper
• Cardboard and poster board
• Primed canvas and wood (for specific tempera techniques)
• Paper-mâché and other porous craft materials

How to Use for Best Results

1. Surface Preparation: Use on sturdy, absorbent paper or board for best adhesion and to prevent cracking.
2. Dispensing & Mixing: Squeeze a small amount onto your palette. Important: When mixing to darken another color, add the black paint very gradually to avoid overwhelming the mixture and creating "mud."
3. Application:
   • For solid black lines or areas: Use straight from the tube or with minimal water.
   • For gray washes or translucent effects: Dilute with varying amounts of water.
   • For mixing grays: Add white to the black, not vice versa, for better control over the value.
4. Utilizing the Re-wettable Feature: If the paint dries on your palette, add a few drops of water, let it sit, and stir to reconstitute it fully.
5. Layering: For crisp dark details, apply over completely dry lighter layers.
6. Clean Up: Clean brushes and tools with warm, soapy water immediately after use.

Professional Tips

• Warm vs. Cool Blacks: Bone Black's warm undertone makes it ideal for natural shadows in landscapes and portraits, where shadows often have a warm quality. For cool shadows (e.g., on a snowy day), a blue-based black might be preferable.
• Avoiding Mud in Mixes: Use black sparingly to darken colors. Often, a darker version of a color can be achieved by mixing it with its complementary color (e.g., add a little orange to blue to darken it), which can yield more vibrant darks.
• Store the tube with the cap tightly closed. If paint dries in the cap, soak it in warm water to clear it.
• While tempera is durable, finished works on paper are best protected under glass.

Keywords

Koh-i-noor bone black tempera, warm black paint 16 ml, tempera paint for mixing grays, re-wettable school paint, matte black for illustration, non-toxic art supplies, shading and outlining paint, classroom art material, professional tempera color.