Kerry James Marshall: Portrait Black
Kerry James Marshall describes the seven shades of black he uses to paint his nuanced figures.
About
In his Chicago studio, Kerry James Marshall shows us the seven customized shades of black he uses to paint his nuanced figures.
TRANSCRIPT
This is the full range of the black flesh tones.
There’s seven.
- Every one of these tones is on
- those – the later figures.
- And so this is the pure carbon black,
- This is that carbon black
- Looking at them side by side you can’t tell.
- This is the pure Mars black,
- which is an iron oxide black.
- You almost can’t tell the difference between them
- But if I put this on top of that,
- The red in it shows up
- when you put it on top,
- And so this is the Mars black
- with some yellow ochre in it.
- But when you stack them on top of each other
- then the – the variations
Every one of these colors is on there.
straight out of the jar.
with cobalt blue in it.
But if you put this on top of that you can tell.
just by looking at them.
it automatically becomes red.
of the pure carbon.
But I mean they all look the same.
start to become more pronounced.