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So I have a necron army, and I always use a black/yellow or black/gold dye scheme in like all of my MMO games that I play, so I wanted to do something along those lines with my necron army.

I was wondering what kind of tips you guys would have as far as making them look great. Ive never been much of an artist so anything that could help me out would be great. Black/yellow is what im looking for, help me out!

Thanks all in advance.

A black/yellow scheme would be pretty cool. There's a couple things you want to keep in mind when looking at doing either black or yellow though.

First off, you can't use straight black as your base coat if you want definition. This is because there is no way to shade black. So, typically, you want to start off with a darker grey colour shade the recesses, and then highlight with a lighter grey colour. This should sell the illusion of it being black while retaining your shadows.

Yellow is a tough colour to paint because the pigments for most yellows is very thin. You can paint it up one thin layer at a time but if you're doing a whole army, you'll probably want to make it easier on yourself.

For this you could use something like a tint or candy colour. If you have an airbrush I would follow this tutorial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY2G7SbKfeE

If you do not, I would recommend painting your "yellow" as a light grey, with white highlights. Then I would brush on Lamenter's Yellow which is GW's glaze but should accomplish the same thing. This method gets your yellow colour without you wanting to rip out your eyes.

The trick with it is that you want to do your base colour (light grey) and then your highlight (white/bone) BEFORE you glaze. Either way I'm interested in seeing how you do. I did necrons too, come check out my P&M blog using the link in my sig

Thanks for the reply Falhurk, ill have to check if my buddy has an airbrush or not. One of the biggest selling points he made to get me to start playing was I could use his paints haha.

Ill have to check out your blog. I am just trying to get as much information as I can before I start painting, because I honestly have no clue how to do things. Ive never been the artistic type so Ill have to see how this works out.

Don't think about it in terms of being artistic. I sure as hell don't.

Look at it as putting colours on models. Think of it more as a colouring book and try to paint in the lines.

The artistic part comes later, and is mostly displayed in terms of colour choices and what not. Really, painting your models just takes a bit of learning the basic techniques (base coating, highlighting, shading, drybrushing) and practicing them.

You WILL get better, regardless of how you start (maybe you're awesome to begin with).

Black + Yellow (or Gold)
White undercoat.
Do the yellow/gold first. If you want quick and easy, I'd just do a couple of layers of yellow wash over the white, rather than using paint as it can take AN AGE to get crisp yellow. If you're prepared to put the time in, great, but if you want a playable army, go with the wash!

When you have the yellow or gold done (for gold, I'd basecoat gold, then do a couple of washes in a sepia wask/ink. Can't remember the name of the new GW sepia, I'm still going on a pot of Gryph's Sepia. When the wash is dry, a generous drybrush highlight of gold), block in the areas you want 'black' with a mid to dark grey, and then wash the hell out of it with black wash. Job done.

I do lots of black and yellow myself, so get prepared to have your patience tested

try washing the gold with Agrax Earthshade. It makes it look nice and warm.

Yellow is a pain on black. You will need something with a lot of pigment to base coat wherever you put the yellow. Vomit brown does the trick for me, as does snakebite leather. The dark browns will also work. Each offers a very different tone to the yellow... As for the metallics, you'll need to lay down a coat as well. I like snakebite leather (I do chaos, so gold on snakebite looks like bronze that's missed its last spit shine), others swear by dark brown. Don't paint the gold too thick, it won't look right, metallics are best used in adding a sheen, not being colors of themselves.

Addendum: as mentioned, crisp yellows are a pain. If you've done watercolors, you'll understand, otherwise, you want to load the brush with the least ammount of diluted yellow without the brush actually being thirsty, then apply paint to Desiree locations. You'll want to work on 15+ models at once with the yellow, that way, once you finish painting on no. 15, no. 1 is dry and ready for the next layer. If you are used t adding white to colors to brighten them up to the next shade: it doesn't work with yellow. You need to use screaming scull, or whatever the creamy off-white is called these days.