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Hi all,

I'm a bit of a newcomer to the painting had a general painting question. If Black is your primary color for your models, do you apply a basecoat of black on top of your undercoat? I undercoat with black primer and the sheen and texture on the model isn't quite the effect I was looking for. If so, would a diluted wash or thinned coat of chaos black be appropriate?

Also, I had a question for any veteran DE painters who would be willing to share a few words of wisdom with a newcomer. What colors do you tend to highlight your DE with? I've seen a lot of painters go with a sickly green highlight to a light grey. Any tips would be appreciated.

Yeah, paint them Chaos Black after priming them black. It's kind of redundant painting black over black, but the finish is different as you noted, and you can clean up mistakes without them showing up as much.

As for highlighting - black should generally be highlighted with a grey, such as Codex Grey or Adeptus Battlegrey. I'm pretty sure the GW black ones are highlighted with a turquoise. However, bright greens really do look good to highlight Dark Eldar in.

Black also looks great highlighted in a different color. I like dark greens, purples and blues. When you get a black marker at the store, it's typically just a very very dark version of one of these colors, anyway (ever see what happens when you dip a Sharpie in water?), since black is actually not a naturally occuring color.

A colored highlight gives the model a VERY different look.

As for painting over black primer with black paint, I'm with SRM entirely.

Eric

try looking up fleshtearer marines. A guy posted here about how he did his black and it was nothing short of phenomenal.

Also, very few things are as black as black paint. If you're going to highlight with a different color (which does look incredibly spiffy, if done well), try basing not in black, but in a very dark shade of the highlight color (be it blue, green, purple, or whatever). You can still shade the deepest recesses with a pure black pin wash and it'll soften the transition when it comes to the highlights, as well as making the overall scheme more coherent.