A Lamp.
When I first started this little hobby back in late 2018, I had a vision to create something that was effectively difficult to look at. A contrast so stark and sharp that an image would not do it justice. I always imagined I would need some extremely black paint and a very bright LED medium as the backdrop.
I originally envisioned using Vantablack as the paint of choice, but that hope was quickly dashed when I realized 2 things about Vantablack:
that you can’t buy it
that it basically works best when it’s baked on metal at extremely high temperatures
This realization dashed my dreams of finding my medium for a long time. It was only in November that I was watching a Youtube video of a guy that discovered a new 99.6% light absorption paint called Musou Black. Musou black can only be purchased from the supplier directly from Japan as of this writing and it’s nowhere near as light absorbing as Vantablack’s nanotube technology, which absorbs over 99.9% of light (That last .3% makes a huge difference). But nonetheless, this is some pretty dark paint, and it doesn’t need to be baked on metal.
After I received the paint, I realized I still didn’t solve my LED backlight problem, but I quickly realized I had a nice looking LED lamp that I bought for my house a few months prior. I decided to use it as a test bed for my work and I have to say I’m pretty proud of how it turned out.
I needed to tape the sides I didn’t want painted and sand the light surface otherwise the already brittle paint would flake off very easily. Next I created a drawing on an old plastic sticker of my “Sprite” logo and cut out the outline. I then carefully placed the sticker, removed the inside of the Sprite and painted over the rest.
2 coats of paint later and voila! I was able to peel away all the tape and stickers and reveal the finished work. I think what I like most about this lamp is that it proved my concept and idea. It looks exactly like I imagined it would (anyone creating anything knows it’s good when what you create turns out as you expect), and critically, an image doesn’t do it justice.
The contrast is so stark, especially on the lamp’s brightest setting that it’s almost difficult to observe. It achieves an essence of contrast that I envisioned and it sets me up nicely with my next project. I haven’t yet resolved the color issue, but that’s a topic for the next piece.
Until next time.
