Painting Tips - Painting Black

One of the harder parts of painting is figuring out how to do black. You can't really do shadows, so the only thing left is to make highlights that don't look weird.
From what I've seen there are two ways to approach black. One is to highlight it with it with the color produced from adding white to it - grey. The problem I find with that is that the colors become so stark that it looks like you painted grey on your model, rather than looking like a natural highlight.

The other way is to highlight with blue. I prefer this because it gives a softer contrast to black, and looks much more sleek. I thought I'd show you the style I'm working with, as well as my lazy man's way of painting black clothing on troops.

If you're new around here, you should know that I love the zenithal highlighting technique. I love the broad, natural color change it creates, and I'm finding it to be quite versatile. I'm still learning how to use it properly, but I think it's something anyone with an airbrush should learn.

Here is the model I'm painting for the winner of this month's blogging giveaway. As always, I start by priming black, then hitting it with grey at a wide and angle and white from the very top.


Then I thin down a 50:50 mix of Chaos Black and P3 Coal Black (which is more of a blue). I want it thin enough that it will let the zenithal come through, but not so thin that it wont spray smoothly across the surface. I didn't get it quite thin enough, so I went back over it with a 25:75 black:Coal Black and hit the highest spots. I then took pure Coal Black on a small brush and ran it over the sharp edges to make them stand out from the black behind them. Here's what I ended up with:



The effect could be intensified as much as you'd like without looking too goofy. I mean if it's good enough for Batman, how bad can it be? If you don't have an airbrush, get some matte medium, thin your paints down to a glaze and put on a movie or something because you may be there awhile. You could settle for only highlighting the edges, but where's the fun in taking the easy route (says the guy with an airbrush and a bag full o' shortcuts)?

The other day I returned to toying around with using zenithal combined with washes. I have a swarm of Circle Orboros models with black cloaks, so I grabbed two pots of Badab Black, close my eyes and started flinging wash everywhere. Okay not really, but after a careful application of the wash, moving heavy pigmentation in to the recesses and being sure to leave everything smooth, I'm pretty happy with the aesthetics vs. time spent. (ignore everything but the cloaks, the 15+ models aren't done yet)




For those of you struggling to get black to look right, I hope I've helped. It's not the only way to do it, but it's certainly becoming my favorite. And remember that you don't need an airbrush for the zenithal technique - just get some black/grey/white primer and you're set.

See you tomorrow!