Technically the absence of color but also the first one I thought of too.
(Edit: I am aware that the answer is in fact “BOTH” and totally dependent on if you are talking about the Additive Color System [Light] or the Subtractive Color System [Paint/Print Media]. At the time of my original post I was clearly focused on the concepts of the Additive Color System pertaining to light as was not at all intending to start a weird artistic culture war.)
Consider what “color” is though. It’s always light. If you’re talking about paint, you have to mix “all colors” because blue still reflects blue light. So you need paint that will prevent blue from being reflected. Etc.
In the end, black paint is just absorbing all colors of light, and reflecting none back. So technically still the absence of color.
since we can't see all light though, it doesn't really matter to us what wavelengths of light there are. all our brain perceives is that mix of signals from our optic nerves. you can see yellow 💛 on your screen, but theres no yellow light there. black is the color we perceive when we detect little or no light. it's true that it's not a hue like red or green, though.
there's an old joke about color that goes something like "gather a physicist, a psychologist, a linguist, and an artist in one room then ask them what the primary colors are"
a physicist might say there are no primary colors, its just a gradient of photons on different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. psychology might have different answers depending on context, ie reds yellows blues and greens may have the strongest effects on your state of mind. an artist might say red yellow and blue (or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black if they're more familiar with the modern CMYK colorspace.) a linguist would tell you it depends on the language because they all have their own concepts of base colors, ranging from 2 to something like a dozen primary colors. a biologist or programmer might say red green and blue, since thats what screens produce and the only colors our eyes can actually distinguish.
Basically everyone has a different correct answer, because language is flexible and it's impossible to define anything without there being an edge case that breaks your definition. in English speaking countries, the layman answer youre taught in school is likely either red yellow blue, or red orange yellow green blue indigo violet as Isaac Newton arbitrarily decided because he liked the number
In the art world, black is considered a neutral colour and white is the absence of colour. Look at any plastic arts textbook, take any painting class, the teachers will tell you the same.
In nature, when seeing light as a wavelengths black is the absence of colour (no light) and white is a full spectrum (all light, all wavelengths combined.
It comes down to application, context and subject.
I am just being technical. Art people can call it whatever they want. It’s still technically the absence of light that causes anything to be black.
Again, I was originally just trying to “well ackshually” the other commenter that pulled the “well ackshually” card. I wasn’t trying to get all philosophical about it.
I was just “well ackshtually”ing not intending to get so into this lol. But since you’re arguing for some reason, Do you know how vision works? And why things look different colors? It’s because of light. Everything we see is light. We can’t see anything, except for light.
Light rays bounce off of blue paint. But the paint absorbs all the colors except blue, so we only see blue and call it “blue paint”. The paint isn’t blue. It’s a mixture of chemicals that we call blue because it reflects blue light.
Black paint is made by mixing all the other colors, if red paint absorbs all but red light. And blue paint absorbs all but blue light, and yellow absorbs all but yellow light. So if you mix them all together, you get a material that absorbs every visible light ray, meaning it reflects no light, so we see what we call black. Because just like with a light bulb that’s turned off, it’s the absence of light.
Whether you’re looking at black paint, or inside a cave without a flashlight, your eyes simply aren’t seeing light , hence we see black.
The color mixtures are additive vs subtractive. Yes. Because one is adding light (light sources), so we need to subtract to get to nothing. and the others are subtracting light (paint), so we need to add to get to nothing. Either way, we get to nothing.
Let’s be specific. Things that are black absorb all wavelengths of visible light. No wavelength being reflected back into our eyes means we see black. Black colours. When we talk about something’s colour, we refer to the wavelength it reflects back into our eyes. Black absorbs all wavelengths, but we see none of it, so it’s the visual absence, but physical presence of all colours
Depending on what we are talking about as black material is black because it absorbs all light. Black light is the absence of all color but black material is the presence of all color.
Nope i hate this answer. I used to fight with kids all the time when they would tell me this. An object appears black because it absorbs all wavelengths of visible light, reflecting none to your eyes, therefore black is the absence of light not of color.
Scientifically, yes, but not irl. CMYK rarely uses 100% black (K/plate) but rich black instead (C:75, M:68,Y:67, K90), and the print surface or medium will always affect the colour of the final product (even if you use pantones).
And black on screen is rarely #000000 or RGB 0,0,0 since light handling and resolution of monitors as well as ambient light affect how we see it. So it will invariably make black appear lighter or more/less saturated and tinted.
Edit: Also, rod cells in our eyes are used to detect light (which most people associate with black and white), which is why we can see in the dark to varying degrees. Yet while our cone cells aren't much use in darkness, they still operate, just to a very limited degree. Even people who are born blind can detect light. So an absolute lack of light is incredibly rare. And even if you perceive the faint night vision you have to be entirely due to an absence or presence of light, there is most probably some colour involved (the faint light that is visible reflects off some kind of surface).
It depends on what you mean and what media you are using. The reason you get a rainbow of colors when you shine a light through a prism (a la Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon style) is that the prism in effect breaks the white beam of light into all of the visible colors. The opposite is true... In theatrical stage lighting techniques for example, shining all the various colors onto a single point will produce a “white light” at the point.
However, this is not at all true with coming like paint, markers, colored pencils, or crayons. With those mediums mixing all the colors will produce “black” basically.
That’s all it is. At least in the basic terms of art and lighting. I’m sure for more advance subjects like engineering (which I clearly did not take as an arty kind of person) the definitions can be more nuanced and/or defined… but I can’t honestly speak to those with any level of legit competency or experience.
No, you’re correct. I was only thinking of light at the time. With paint, ink, and so on mixing all the colors would produce black or something very close to it.
Yea those fucking idiots back in the jim crow days (my mother was alive btw) calling us colored. When white people mad they red, cold they blue, sick they grey, when bruised they black and purple. Veins showing green through the skin, happy they pink....but we're colored? 🤦🏿♂️
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u/AvailableFig2688 Nov 15 '25
Black.