About
Important: By backing this project you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not backing this on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this material will not make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.
There's none more black!
Black 3.0 is a super special acrylic paint. We have spent nearly 2 years tweaking its formulation to create a black that absorbs between 98 and 99% of visible light! Quite simply we've created the blackest black acrylic paint.
- Last November we shared a beta batch of Black 3.0 with 1000 artists around the world for feedback and thoughts. We've now taken that information and reformulated it to be the best black we could possibly make.
- All the photos and video content on this page are created with the final formulation of Black 3.0 from the UK factory that are producing it for us, we are excited to be playing with it and feel like it's perfect!
- We need your help so that we can pay the paint factory to produce their minimum order quantity of our recipe so we can share our creation with everyone!
The science behind the Black!
We wanted a super-flat, ultra-matte black that absorbed almost all visible light. To achieve that we went right back to the basics of paint making. The problem with existing black pigments is they are all slightly reflective (carbon is the most common and if you think of coal or charcoal you'll know it has a shine to it), so we created a whole new pigment in the lab and we call it 'Black Magick', it is born matte! This means that the mattifiers we used in Black 2.0, which added a tiny grey tint, are no longer needed making a way blacker looking paint! We've also managed to formulate a new acrylic polymer to hold the pigment, it's special because it has more available bonds than any other acrylic polymer being used in paints. This means it can cling onto way more pigment, leading to a really dense pigment load and a depth of colour not previously possible. We have sourced some brand new nano-mattifiers which we have added, these flatten out the last bits of stray light without compromising colour.
We have benchmarked Black 3.0 against 45 existing black paints, this photo demonstrates a small section of those, being the most commonly available black paints in the UK. We also sent beta versions of Black 3.0 to 1000 artists around the world, they filled in a questionnaire and 93% of them preferred it to our Black 2.0 (previously the worlds flattest mattest black).
It's super easy to use.
Other super blacks are complicated to use and extremely expensive. Most require heat, science labs and specialist training to apply. We wanted to make a super affordable, easy to use paint that was familiar to artists so they could concentrate on expressing themselves.
We think that sharing your colours with others is nice! When Stuart heard that Kapoor was the only artist that could use the blackest black he felt sad but also a bit bad that he'd been making awesome colours and only using them in his own work. So he started sharing his colour creations on the internet with other artists.
The holy grail of paints is the ultimate zero-point black. We've been on a mission to create exactly that for a long while because we want all artists to be able to express themselves with awesome materials. The limits of your creations should be your imagination not how rich or successful you are.
We are a small team of artists and paint makers based in a studio in Dorset on the south coast of England. We are headed up by British artist Stuart Semple who has been making his own colours for nearly 20 years.
We've created and shared tens of thousands of the artiest art materials with artists all over the world including LIT (the world's glowiest glow pigment). PINK (the pinkest pink), Gold (the goldest gold), Black 2.0 (the mattest flattest black paint), Dazzle (the glitteriest plant based glitters) and many more creations.
You can see what we make and learn all about us on our website:
No matter what reward you choose you will get at least one bottle of Black 3.0 but your support means so much to us we wanted to thank you properly. Stuart and his team have been busy over the last few weeks designing the rewardiest rewards to thank you properly! These will only ever be available to kickstarter backers! He's come up with commemorative mugs, notebooks, sticker and badge packs and even a gorgeous organic screenprinted 'haus' street sack bag. Below are actual photos of the actual rewards you will receive :) We hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed making them!
Risks and challenges
Although we're a small team we've made and distributed tens of thousands of art materials to artists all over the globe. We've planned Black 3.0 properly and don't expect any problems or delays. As always if anything were to change we'd keep you in the loop and do our very best!
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