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I'm looking at painting a miniature with black hair. I want to keep the mini with realistic tones. I see many people use blue. Should I start black, then really dark grey and then just a little lighter grey?

Maybe like eshin grey for the dark?

You could use a grey with a slight blue or other natural hair color tinge to it then glaze it down with black till you get the tone you want.

Do base coat of dyrad bark or black, drybrush longbeard grey, then agrax earthshade to soften up the contrast.

You can also use dark brown for highlights. Most people with black hair has shades of brown on their hair when hit by light.

Source: 99% of people I know have black hair.

I would try to keep the highlights hard and glossy. You don't want to soften them too much and end up with hair that just looks grey. I made this image a while ago to try an illustrate the different effect you can get with different types of highlight. You probably want something similar to #2.


You might also want to have a look at some photographs and artwork for inspiration, e.g...

The easiest way is to just paint it black, layer it up, and then glaze it or wash it to soften.

My preference is Black -> Skavenblight Dinge -> Stormvermin Fur. For a nice model, a custom glaze, for a normal model, nuhln or agrax thinned about 50% with lahmian medium.

Most of the time, I do the glaze before the last highlight, so that the last highlight is more contrasty. You can also finish with Dawnstone or another lighter grey, depending on the model.

Always use a colour as opposed to grey, grey highlights make it look flat and worn, and well... Grey

One thing that has not been asked is:

On what kind of model is this black hair?

Is it Sci-Fi or Fantasy?

Is it on a wealthy person (or a person who is not poor), or is it on a person living in poverty, homeless, or living in otherwise primitive conditions.

Is it on an Elf? A Dwarf? A human? What about an Orc/Goblin?

Is it on a man or a woman?

Are they supposed to be highly attractive and desirable, or plain, or maybe even ugly?

All of these questions will tend to influence the sort of shading you put on the black hair.

The Goblins I have been painting have Archers and one Warrior that has hair, which I have been painting either black or grey.

On MOST of the black hair, I have used grey and white as highlights, and I do not have glossy highlights, as if there is a sheen in the hair. I use a feathered, blended highlight intended to make the hair look frazzled, and dry, or very greasy (where there are a few sharp highlights, but the remainder run through the entire strands).

But the Elves I have been painting (Noldorim) have hair that is more akin to a Fashion Model's hair (Black, of course, like MOST Noldor). There I tend to have highlights that run circular around the crown or rim of the hair, one brighter highlight that runs vertically from the edge of the hair up to the crown, and then a duller highlight running opposite to it, usually in a bluish color.

Although violet can also be used in this case. It needs to be a very reddish violet to look right.

MB

It is a man of Asian descent. It is like a realife type model. not scifi or fantasy.

I was trying to figure out how to paint realistic looking black hair. That is why I was originally looking at grey or I see brown is also suggested. I hadn't thought about brown. I was thinking the easiest would be black and grey and make him look older. The model is very old board game piece from the 60s

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Always use a colour as opposed to grey, grey highlights make it look flat and worn, and well... Grey

I agree. Neither white nor black look as good with just grey as with a slight tint. This is why I like Skavenblight Dinge and Stormvermin Fur; another of my favorites is Dark Reaper and then Fenrisian Grey for a blue tint.