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At first for my CSM army I was going to go with slaanesh but then went with khorn instead so my color is changing. I dont really like the red/bronze but khornes 3rd color is black so black and bronze it is. Thinking about it. I have never actually painted black before. Now I know painting just straight black will look horrible so i was wondering if I could get a good step by step on how to paint my marines black.

I will add in I am fairly decent at painting I am looking for a black that looks nice. So if it takes a bit longer to do per model. That wont bother me in the least.

Black undercoat. If you can get it VMC black grey is excellent - either airbrush or drybrush a gentle zenital highlight, then add a little codex grey for edges. Knock it back with badab black glazes, blended to the recesses. If you can't get the VMC black grey about 2:1 black / codex grey is pretty close.

VMC Black (169) is the best black there is that I have ever seen. It has no gloss to it at all, so it looks extra dark when side by side with things like chaos black.

You can then get 4 vallejo blacks of different shades to use as highlighting steps which are incredibly smooth and need no mixing.

and they are (in order dark to light):
1. German Grey (167)
2. Black Grey (168)
3. Dark Grey (166)

Then for cold grey::

1. Dark Bluegreen (164)

And warm grey:

1. Grey Green (165)

Alright I think I have a pretty good idea as to what I need to do.

However what did you mean by zenital highlighting. I know its a painting technique but its never really been explained to me.

It's an Airbrushing Technique whereby you spray a Base Colour, in your case Black, and then progressively spray some Highlight Colours in much more dispersed coats at an angle of 45 Degrees, to give the impression of Light from above.

The best example of this which comes to mind is Winterdyne's Ultramarine Sternguard Veteran Squad Step-by-Step Tutorial, which uses Zenital Highlighting to achieve the Blue Base. You would simply need to apply the Technique to a set of Monotone, Greyscale colours.

http://www.winterdyne.co.uk/maz/winterdyne_tutorial1.pdf

Happy Painting!

Its a process of using Spray Paint / Airbrush and spraying from an upper angle with a lighter shade to simulate highlights from the sun / upper light source. By spraying from an upper angle it leaves the lower spots that should be "shaded" without paint.


EDIT: we posted at the same time, funny...lol