painting black?

[chaplain belisarius]

Hi,

 

is it possible to dip black models in order to give them shading(im not a good painter but my black armoured guys look kinda unfinished if i just paint them black and give them a black wash)

 

thanks in advance! :)

[maverike_prime]

I'm not a master painter so if someone corrects me on this, go with what they say.

 

But I don't think you can shade black. It's always been my experience that you high light black. Basically shading is used for going from light to darkness while High lighting is used for going from Dark to light. Since Black is already about has dark as you can go, you can't shade it.

[Vindicatus]

Best you can do to black is actually take some washed out Shadow Grey and outline some of the edges, that way the black of the armour itself helps 'shade' in the creases.

[raven guard 1369]

Or you can make your armor a really really dark grey and shade to black. I do the highlighting myself but I've seen the dark grey done very nicely. Also I read that if you mix bleached bone with black it looks like black metal. Pretty cool idea for boltgun casings

[Brother_Ovis]

You may want to try something my friend uses. He paints his models Astronomican Grey (very light grey) and then gives them several layers of black wash, which results in very grim near-black with nicely accented textures. Easy and quick.

[Vindicatus]

Hm. Astronomican Grey is actually very DARK grey. It's a foundation paint and I used a thinned down version to make my 'dark smoke' Grey Knight terminators.

 

Anyways, the resulting technique of applying a lighter colour and several washes of black would likely turn out pretty awesome.

[Boltergeist]

The short answer is no-- you can't shade black because it's already as dark as it gets. However, you can fool the eye into thinking the armor is black when really it isn't, and shade from there. It really depends on your color scheme, but for example you could mix necron abyss and black for a really dark blue, and then shade with a black wash. This would also work with Scorched Brown if you wanted a 'warm' black, etc.

 

Another trick is to skip shading and use two types of highlights, with a wash to bring them together. I like black highlighted with dark blue with a thin highlight of fenris grey, then with badab black over it. The wash tones down the stark highlights and makes it look cohesive. Fair warning however it does take a bit of experimentation and practice.

 

An easier process is a black primer with dark blue drybrush (regal blue, etc) followed by a very light medium grey drybrush (Adeptus battlegrey, etc). Done correctly it still looks black, but picks out the details well.

[djhg]

On the tires and boltguns mounted to my bikes (plus the meltaguns) I started with Adeptus Battlegrey, shaded with Space Wolf Grey then pure Skull White.

Add 3-5 coats of Black wash depending on your preferences and then if you feel you want some spot shading you can apply pure Chaos Black to said spots.

[chaplain belisarius]

oops...i meant highlighting. at present i just paint them black, give them a black wash. What can i do to make them look less flat and unfinished?

 

thanks! :)

[Hellios]

Chipping black

 

Ok not highlighting but more detail... so I thought I would add it!

 

Someone elses request about high lighting black (has links to other pages)

 

I couldn't find the one I was looking for but maybe it is linked in one of those :S