I am aware that not everyone reading this may be a painter, so I thought it may be interesting for some of the non-painters to see how I get a rich black color for my night time paintings. I'm still working out a formula, and it varies slightly each time. That said, for this corn field painting I used a mixture of Golden Van Dyke Brown, Liquitex Transparent Raw Umber, Golden Raw Umber (These three colors are all real dark, rich browns), with Payne's Gray (a near-black Blue hue). This gave me a semi-transparent dark, warm black. While the paint is still wet (not much time for acrylics - on a thin coat it is five minutes tops), I could wipe out some of the highlights. This mixture of paint leaves a nice gold-brown/black stain when it is wiped out. After this is dry, as stated below, I will be putting a transparent glaze of Payne's Gray with a little Raw Umber over the entire surface - again wiping out the highlights. If all goes well, that should do it for this particular painting.
In some of my past night-time paintings I would also alternate glazes of dark Blue/Greens (Payne's Gray and Hooker's Green mixtures) with glazes of rich reds (I prefer the Windsor and Newton brand red pigments). As you can see I go through a lot of Payne's Gray and Raw Umber. I also don't have exclusive brand preference - I think the Raw Umber in Golden Paints is darker than its Liquitex equivalent, but I often buy both because sometimes I prefer a more neutral tone. I would say in general though, I use more Golden and Utrecht paints than other brands.
Golden - Van Dyke Brown
Liquitex (PDF)- Transparent Raw Umber
Utrecht - Hooker's Green
Windsor & Newton - Cadmium Red Deep
Windsor & Newton - Alizarin Crimson
