black eyes, eye lenses, jewels etc.

[the emperor is scottish]

Basicaly what the title and description says. How do you paint eye lenses and jewels (im talking mainly about the blood droplets that cover BA models) black without it just looking like you've forgoten to paint them.

 

One more thing has anyone attempted to paint power weapons black? and what colour of 'lightning' did you use to go along with it. Did you get the effect you were looking for?

[Tanhausen]

The trick with black is...

 

Painting grey :cuss

 

You do the big area dark gray and start bringing the dark areas to black and the light to white.

 

Working with pure white and pure black I think is one of the hardest things to do properly and its real easy to do poorly.

[winterdyne]

Painting gems black is all about the spot(s). Do the contra-highlight in a very dark grey (VMC Black-Grey is my go-to 'very dark grey'), then do the dot(s) in white. You need the dot to be bang on - for round gems, generall a single dot is ok, but for blood drops at an angle you need a ! type arrangement, the line from the point heading down slightly, with a tiny dot under it. For oval gems, generally it's two round dots, one slightly larger than the other.

 

For a more colourful look, you can use a very dark blue, or green for the contra highlight, but it's best to keep the saturation down by darkening it with black.

 

Power weapons, I tend to paint as stone, so dark greys are the order of the day, keeping the highlights tight. To do the lightning on it, you'd need to OSL it properly to get it looking right. A steady hand and a pointy brush are your friends there.

[Hemal]

The key is basically in teh extreme contrast at the tip of the jewel and a more muted highlight at the other end - making it look glossy and shiny.