How do you paint your Black Legion

[Indefragable]

Got a box of Chaos Space Marines and started painting up as Black Legion as (yet another) sanity project during COVID. 

 

I used the "GW official" method on Warhammer TV but it came out.....rather 8bit. Blacks are very black and gold is very gold and it kind makes them look like Tron guys with the outlines. 

 

Pics of mine so far (Note: these were quick and thrown together, so excuse the background stuff)

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Just curious what methods/guides any of you use. 

 

I saw this one and I like the look of the more muted gold, but that could just be personal taste. 

 

 

EDIT: added pics. 

Edited February 3, 2021 by Indefragable

[Syrakul]

Depends what level of painter you are and time you wanna spend on them. I'm always looking for shortcuts, so my take (probably dismissed by better painters, understandable) would be:

Bluish black: After black undercoat, heavy drybrush with kantor blue or dark reaper, lighter drybrush (higher edge catching) with thunderhawk blue.

Then heavy nuln wash, which brings it down to a deep blue-tinted black.

Then you can do top highlight with a high blue grey like celestra grey or fenrisan grey

 

For gold, again for speed I love retributor gold for quick covering then wash with reikland fleshshade, the blues and redish gold complement, with green eyes

Edited February 3, 2021 by Syrakul

[Marshal Loss]

For visual interest, paint the armour a blue black or a green black or something like that. The most popular way to do it, if you're edge highlighting everything, is to work up from incubi darkness/dark reaper/thunderhawk blue with ever-thinner highlights. If you can airbrush it's a walk in the park & you can apply filters with ease; this also minimises the need for edge highlighting.

 

The 'eavy metal team paint their BL with a tainted gold made by mixing liberator gold with dryad bark (you can see a very similar take on it here). Never done it myself, but I really like the look.

 

Me personally I've adopted a recipe from Duncan's website, which I won't post out of respect to paying customers. It gets results like this though, which I'm very fond of

[SanguinaryGuardsman]

For visual interest, paint the armour a blue black or a green black or something like that. The most popular way to do it, if you're edge highlighting everything, is to work up from incubi darkness/dark reaper/thunderhawk blue with ever-thinner highlights. If you can airbrush it's a walk in the park & you can apply filters with ease; this also minimises the need for edge highlighting.

 

The 'eavy metal team paint their BL with a tainted gold made by mixing liberator gold with dryad bark (you can see a very similar take on it here). Never done it myself, but I really like the look.

 

Me personally I've adopted a recipe from Duncan's website, which I won't post out of respect to paying customers. It gets results like this though, which I'm very fond of

I tried using deepest darkest purple with slaanesh grey highlights out of an airbrush... it reads as greyish blue at a normal viewing distance (12" or more" but if you look really close (6" or less) you can see the purple!  Needless to say this was a failed painting experiment but I like it.   I think if I were to get a do over I would just paint them the way GW does but maybe add some weathering or targeted airbrush work on things like plasmaguns, flames, chaos runes, topknots, etc.   

[Marshal Loss]

 

For visual interest, paint the armour a blue black or a green black or something like that. The most popular way to do it, if you're edge highlighting everything, is to work up from incubi darkness/dark reaper/thunderhawk blue with ever-thinner highlights. If you can airbrush it's a walk in the park & you can apply filters with ease; this also minimises the need for edge highlighting.

 

The 'eavy metal team paint their BL with a tainted gold made by mixing liberator gold with dryad bark (you can see a very similar take on it here). Never done it myself, but I really like the look.

 

Me personally I've adopted a recipe from Duncan's website, which I won't post out of respect to paying customers. It gets results like this though, which I'm very fond of

I tried using deepest darkest purple with slaanesh grey highlights out of an airbrush... it reads as greyish blue at a normal viewing distance (12" or more" but if you look really close (6" or less) you can see the purple!  Needless to say this was a failed painting experiment but I like it.   I think if I were to get a do over I would just paint them the way GW does but maybe add some weathering or targeted airbrush work on things like plasmaguns, flames, chaos runes, topknots, etc.   

 

See what you can do there is just thin down a black (like really, really thin - 5 parts thinner to 1 part paint, something like that) and airbrush that as a filter/glaze over the armour to tone down the highlights down and make the end result more subtle. Unifies & ties together the paintjob

[SanguinaryGuardsman]

 

 

For visual interest, paint the armour a blue black or a green black or something like that. The most popular way to do it, if you're edge highlighting everything, is to work up from incubi darkness/dark reaper/thunderhawk blue with ever-thinner highlights. If you can airbrush it's a walk in the park & you can apply filters with ease; this also minimises the need for edge highlighting.

 

The 'eavy metal team paint their BL with a tainted gold made by mixing liberator gold with dryad bark (you can see a very similar take on it here). Never done it myself, but I really like the look.

 

Me personally I've adopted a recipe from Duncan's website, which I won't post out of respect to paying customers. It gets results like this though, which I'm very fond of

I tried using deepest darkest purple with slaanesh grey highlights out of an airbrush... it reads as greyish blue at a normal viewing distance (12" or more" but if you look really close (6" or less) you can see the purple!  Needless to say this was a failed painting experiment but I like it.   I think if I were to get a do over I would just paint them the way GW does but maybe add some weathering or targeted airbrush work on things like plasmaguns, flames, chaos runes, topknots, etc.   

 

See what you can do there is just thin down a black (like really, really thin - 5 parts thinner to 1 part paint, something like that) and airbrush that as a filter/glaze over the armour to tone down the highlights down and make the end result more subtle. Unifies & ties together the paintjob

 

I did that with an oil wash... worked out ok.  They are the "Dark Blue with Hints of Purples Legion"

[battle captain corpus]

So...this is my method. Firstly I'll quantify though...I now really just paint to get minis on the table. So its quick, dirty and done but I like it!

 

- Prime black.

- Drybrush whole mini a midtone grey (something like Eshin or Dawnstone)

- Block in rest of your colours. Gold trim, silvers, reds etc.

- Wash the entire mini head to toe with Sepia wash.

- Base and done.

 

 

BCC

[Ezekyle_Abaddon]

For my black legion I use the paint method described in the How to Paint: Abaddon the Despoiler by Warhammer TV, switching dark reaper for stegadon scale green

I find that this is a better version of the standard scheme.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Ezekyle_Abaddon

[Shovellovin]

I have been using this method. It's really easy and gives a really gritty look to your veterans of the long war.

 

(I would have embedded the video but can't figure out how to do so.)

[Lucerne]

https://secretsofthevoid.wordpress.com/2019/12/26/black-legion-tutorial/

[Shovellovin]

https://secretsofthevoid.wordpress.com/2019/12/26/black-legion-tutorial/

KIller Black Legion! I especially like the orange glow.

[techsoldaten]

This video demonstrates the technique I use.

 

 

Airbrush black, then add gradients taking the armor up to white. I use Sotek Green and mix in white progressively.

 

Glaze using a thick wash medium mixed with black. From there, paint trim and do edge highlights.

[GreaterChickenofTzeentch]

So...this is my method. Firstly I'll quantify though...I now really just paint to get minis on the table. So its quick, dirty and done but I like it!

 

- Prime black.

- Drybrush whole mini a midtone grey (something like Eshin or Dawnstone)

- Block in rest of your colours. Gold trim, silvers, reds etc.

- Wash the entire mini head to toe with Sepia wash.

- Base and done.

 

 

 

BCC

Mine's close to this one, but I prefer brass for the trim and only wash the metals, leaving lots of little gray marks on the black that look like weathering, in addition to the highlighting that I'm looking for.

[Plague _Lord]

I don't paint black legion but for gold i go balthasar gold with a heavy wash of agrax earthshade or druchii violet depending on the model. It comes out nice and dark.

[Wayniac]

https://secretsofthevoid.wordpress.com/2019/12/26/black-legion-tutorial/

Wow I love that.  Might have to experiment with something similar.  I love how it gives that grimdark/Blanchitsu style

Edited March 17, 2021 by Wayniac