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So I was looking at painting some of my spare Bret Figures, with the main color black. Now I've heard painting black is quite hard, as is painting white, any tips on how to make black look good?

Prime grey, wash black until the black looks black enough without obliterating the natural highlights and shadows created through the process.

For a more striking contrast, use a lighter primer (up to using a white primer).

Don't do black. You can't shade it. Do really really dark grey.

I do black by using black as the basecolour and using an airbrush to shade up to a dark grey at the points light can hit, it really only works well if you have an airbrush or are good at went blending but can look reasonable when done.

Example:

Black-Grey (VMC) base, black wash, then "less_darker_but_still_dark" grey glaze-layers, optional lighter edge lighting.
Or black base and glaze-layers from black-grey and up.

Plus, you can add a bit of colour to the 'lighter' hues, and/or a light and colourd edge (e.g light turquoise).

The downside of these methods is they are a bit time consuming.