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So I've been painting for almost a year now and I'm still having problems with 1 color, namely black.

For every thinkable color (except for white maybe), there are washes, layers, bases all in different shades. These can be used in a variety of ways to get different effects on your model.
However, there is only one black paint (abaddon black) and one black was (nuln oil) as far as I know.

I was wondering how other people paint things black. Do you do anything besides putting on black paint?

You could try using a very dark grey, then shading with black (could use a wash)

This is by no means definitive, but I go for -

Abaddon black, eshin grey drybrush, wash it all with nuln oil. Drybrush lightly with eshin again.

That's why I use for details and smaller parts, but if it's your primary colour there might be a better approach.

I'm going for a black legion color scheme on my CSM so it's my primary colour alright.

A lot of the painters I watch on youtube use colours from Reaper's Liner series, mostly Grey Liner, but theres also Blue Liner and Brown Liner. They're very very very dark shades of those colours which are near-black, but have tone so when the light hits it theres a bit of colour and it adds depth, compared to Abbadon black which is totally flat.

I haven't used any of them myself though so I can't tell you what I think, but I've heard them recommended a lot. Hope that helps

Personally I paint the model silver, then apply multiple coats of black ink until I get the effect I want. Using transparent inks allows light to get through to the basecoat giving a natural highlight effect. I'm sure there are better ways, but I just find this method quick and effective.

That's a pretty cool idea. Would be a pain to do it on vehicles though.

The first thing to remember is that most things which seem black really aren't pure black, but rather a very dark color.

What this means for painting is that you start with pure black as a base, but then shade and highlight with something else.

If you are going for a true black color, you should shade with a black or very dark brown wash(like Devlin Mud or Badab Black) and then highlight with a lighter color. Such as grey or light brown.

I usually use 2 formulas. A brown formula and a black formula.

Brown formula is,

Base of Abaddon/Chaos Black

Wash of Devlin Mud

Highlight of mournfang/bestial brown

This will result in a black with a slight brown tinge, excellent for dirty black cloth or just a browner black.


Black formula

Base of Abaddon/Chaos Black

Wash of Badab Black

Highlight of Codex Grey.

This results in a shinier black. Great for armor or cloth you want to look very black.

Another alternative is to shade with Leviathan Purple instead of Badab Black. This gives an "evil" vibe to the area while maintaining a dark shade.

If you want a metallic base you can swap the Chaos Black for a metal color of choice, multiple coats of wash may be required to get a hue you want.

Pick a sheen. Blue, Green, red, doesn't matter. Then you paint it jet black, and add a dark color of color of your choice for highlighting. For black-black, it's going to be grey and white for lighting effect. Usualy edging in grey and a few dots of white do the trick.

I tend to just do Black base, then German grey (VGC) layeres up, high lighting up as far as i want (usually a codex greyish color)

Here's a great tutorial that not only explains how you can do it, but also why painting black is not necessarily painting just black:

http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.de/2014/05/tutorial-painting-colour-black.html


Personally I will change my mixture depending on the effect I want. I usually start with a black base then layer the midtones and highlights, leaving black at the darkest recesses and areas. What I mix with black differs everytime: sometimes I add blues or violets, most of the time it's a shade of blue-grey. A bit of yellow can also be added for something like an olive-y highlight. If The midtones/highlights became too bright for my taste, I just use a black wash to tone it down.



Here I mixed violets for the black top and browns at the black boots.





Red violets on the "socks" and a neutral grey for the hair (with a bit of white because I want it to look shiny). The dress itself almost has no transition because it will detract attention from the freehand, so instead of smooth blending I just added neutral extreme highlights.

Hope that hepled you somewhat. Basically you can mix anything with black as long as the resulting color would still be very dark and will transition well with black.

This is pretty decent:

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2010/08/wfb-hobby-painting-black-cool-way.html

And I imagine for a warmer highlight you'd mix in some ushabti bone or similar?

More grist for the mill:

http://spyglassasylum.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/painting-tip-black-fabric.html

Me own rather uncomplicated tabletop-quality method is to paint some subtle, dark highlights in grey, brown or blue, then whack a load of some kind of black wash over it and rely on the sheen to do most of the work. (Actually works reasonably well on black, which lets natural reflections and highlights show up better by virtue of being, y'know, very dark.)






http://www.cheddarmongers.org/prod/pic/Vermis/Fantasy/

I am by no mean a good painter, but I like to give a small shading to my black. That means that I generally don't use black as my primary color. I will either go very very very dark brown or very very very dark green. On top of that I will use highlights and texture of very dark grey (almost black, but not totally) and build up toward real highlights. I don't have a good example, so I will give this one :



Of course this is after some wash and other stuff (I tried to paint the mini following John Blanche color scheme), but it gives a proper idea. You could do the same thing using less color (brown and green) and more grey. But I don't think painting using just black will do a good job.

I also tried to do something different the other day: I primed white my model, and only used nuln oil (thinned down, but 5-6 time) to give a greyish black. I did this because I wanted to quick paint the model to play it at a game the next day lol, not a great idea but it still worked fined.



Same thing with her (did her the same day too) :



I hope both of those tricks help you. The bottom for me is this : don't use black to paint black.

As others have said, you don't paint black. Use a dark grey, brown, green, blue, or purple, and highlight accordingly. Shading via black wash is acceptable. Personally I'm a fan of an extremely dark blue, shaded with black wash, highlighted with P3's Coal Black (which is a dark blue-green color). Output should be similar to this:

I do a base coat of black, a highlight via airbrush of German Grey from Vallejo and then edge the extreme edges in mechanicus grey and an even thinned edging of screaming skull. Finally wash with Agrax Earthshade Ends up like this: