Impressionist painting which started in the late 1800’s uses dabs of paint. They do not paint outlines and use color contract to delineate the areas that normally would be outlined. They also only used black paint for man made items since they insisted that black does not occur in nature.
(The Great Courses – How to Look at and Understand Great Art)
Black doesn’t occur in nature? Well then, what is the color of lava and the very dark coats/markings of various animals?
These artists insist that BLACK is not a nature color. VERY VERY dark colors exist but not absolute BLACK.