Lamp Black is most likely the basic black you’d get in a set. It’s an opaque black made from carbon, so it’s very very black.
PBk6 Pigment Stats
Pigment Description: Carbon Black
Lightfastness: Excellent (ASTM I) per ArtIsCreation
Toxicity: Non-toxic (A) per ArtIsCreation
Staining: Heavy staining
Observations of Da Vinci Lamp Black
Tinting Strength: Very strong and easy to work up a good masstone.
Opacity: Super opaque in masstone, though it seems to transition pretty abruptly to non-masstone. An interesting effect I noticed when painting over a waterproof felt tip pen for my opacity test was that the paint, despite being opaque, still showed the pen mark below because it seemed to leap away from the pen marks when painted over. No idea why.
Granulation: Slightly granulating, particularly evident in midtone and on textured paper (the cold press Wonder Forest paper I used is moderately textured).
Dispersion: I got a totally unintentional test when I left a stray water drop near my lower bar; the black paint immediately colonized it, a good sign that this is quite a dispersive pigment.
Blooms: Inspired by my unintentional bloom, I added a semi-controlled bloom test: ‘mountain’ shaped painted with the top in Lamp Black and the bottom in splashes of water droplets to create intentional blooms. They looked interesting wet but dried in a patchy way I found less attractive.
Color Mixes: I’m not enamored with black mixes generally, and this is no exception. The slight granulation is more apparent in mixes and generally keeps separate from the background color, especially in very transparent colors e.g. phthalos. As a result, most mixes just look dirty with black specks mixed in.
Misc Notes: The DV version, like many DV paints, is shiny in masstone.
Conclusion
As a mixing color, this doesn’t inspire me. For me, the main use case is flat black foreground objects (e.g. silhouettes). Because of the way the watercolor can become patchy when diluted a bit too much, I think Lamp Black gouache is more foolproof. Still, this works up a strong, flat black masstone with skilled water control.
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Da Vinci Lamp Black, 15ml tube: Da Vinci Paints | Blick | Utrecht