Myths About Black
If you spread out a pile of confetti, the first thing a child is attracted to is the bright color. From a physiological and visual structure viewpoint, the development of vision in infants will be difficult. Without sufficient color education to form cognitive coordination of the middle color or tertiary colors and stimulate the sustainable development of vision training, a child will remain only capable of identifying with and using these so-called "bold" colors, and as a result, lack an understanding of color beauty even into old age. Like eating only McDonald's fast food, one will never experience using refined tastebuds to appreciate Chinese cuisine.
Figure 1.
HaoXiang Zhan (11 years old) Penguin
But when children use gray or black colors, we tend to have a very stubborn conceptual stereotype of the child as a repressed, unhappy, or injured mind. To us, black seems to be paralleled with a depressed negative personality. Because adults have this conception, children from as early as kindergarten bring back drawings and paintings from school that are often colorful, with almost all the colors used, indicating to us that the child's psychological development is healthy and normal. A typical adult that believes this specious idea about color is often a result of the education process. When basic cognitive color ability has not developed and basic ideas are not established, there will be some baseless assertions on the value of color. The errors of adults, originating from unvetted concepts, deeply affect the Enlightenment and development of art education. Analyzing works in Taiwanese art contests, one can see that the winners are none other than the ever-popular "bold and lively" ─ works with bright and contrasting colors.
Black is not a scourge; let children know the magic of using the color black. Doing so will result in an effect much like adding some salt when cooking vegetables; it softens raw ingredients. Using black in art can unite colors with each other, reduce the intensity of color contrast, and train our visual tastes to have tranquil, harmonious, and graceful tones.