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A friend of mine is starting into the painting aspect of the hobby (he's been playing grey minis for a few months now). And he wants to paint his Chaos Marines as Black Legion. And he wants me to help him with it, which I am happy to do, but I absolutely abhor painting black right now because I just find it so boring. I just find it to be a very dull and lifeless colour.

So, does anyone know any good or interesting techniques for painting black? I'm looking for anything, just ballpark it if you can. Thanks guys.

Paint it dark gray and wash it out to black?

I dunno, I'm at the same point painting this single 54mm death watch marine

try standing on your head or putting the paint brush in your mouth. that'll liven things up a little

but seriously...
I agree with the guy above, do a darkish grey and wash black. you'll get a much better end product than just pure black

 Astro Wolf wrote:
try standing on your head or putting the paint brush in your mouth. that'll liven things up a little

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

If you want black to look I think there's a few ways to go about it. One is to focus on highlights, highlights matter more than shades with black (which is why I've never really liked the look of black painted using dark grey and washing it with black wash).

Another way that miniature painters don't always think of, just paint it black and then weather it. The way fine scale modellers often do black is to paint it black (or very very dark grey) and then use grey or light beige weathering (oil wash, weathering powder, etc) in the crevices to bring out the contrast. You can then add some paint chipping to raised areas if you want. It's a different path to go down rather than the typical "exaggerate contrast by using very dark shades and very light highlights" route that is often what is done with miniatures.

Of course if you go down the weathering route the entire model has to be weathered, so it depends how the whole model is going to look.

Spray black, drybrush with a medium-dark grey (I like 2:1 Vallejo Neutral grey to black) and then wash with black wash. Takes literally 10 minutes to do a whole squad and looks good. Examples of my own work below that took 5 minutes to do the black areas







Last one isn't a great image but you can see the results best with the Terminator Lord, the black was a 5 minute affair and then I could move onto the metal without fear of fething up details worrying about the black. In fact, I was able to do the metal on these models before I did the first wash of black and was able to do the entire model in one go.

I personally paint my ravenger guard black and highlight with mechanicus grey. But I also make sure there are other colors to help break up the black.

Try counter highlights toward dark blue (lower edges etc) and upper highlights toward light yellow/tan/beige. This gives warm/cold contrast across the model. It's very subtle but it looks good.

Spray with grey primer. Give it a wash of black, repeat until it starts to look right. Using a mix of blue and black, paint from the black up to the edge, leaving a sharp highlight of grey on the edge.

The only decent alternative I can suggest is to use Paynes Grey (a really dark blue). I have tube of W&N Galleria.

It's just light enough to let a black wash have an effect and allows you to highlight in a range of blues or greys. I avoids some of the dusty look you can get with a dark grey.

P3 has a "Coal Black" which is basically Payne's Grey.

I do an edge highlight in as light a grey as I dare. Currently using the old Space Wolves Grey, but I'm starting to think actually using white might work better. It seems counterintuitive, but really bright hard edges defines blacks much better than anything else.

This is sort of what I mean by doing a weathered black look, I quite like a weathered black vs a cartoony black which is what people often default to when doing black....

Vallejo German grey is a really nice dark grey color (though a little bright for me still)

i hear P3 coal grey or whoever makes coal grey is very nice base dark grey to black stuff.

to make it interesting you could do more highlighting and gradient blending to make it not look so flat. as well as some OSL and weathering. to break up the black. (not super lazy airbrush osl but subtle glazing and stuff)

Blacks for minis are actually greys. Greys are one of the funnest palettes to work with. The type of grey you pick can have a slight hue/saturation to it, trying playing with a hue which complements your other colors. Or, try doing entire schemes with only dark greys. In visual design, saturation/luminesnece are generally more important than hues. You can do some really great stuff using only grey.

Quick and dirty, you could try something like black base coat, zenithal highlight with dark grey with an airbrush if you have one, then a black wash on top to shade and pick out details.

This might be kinduv applicable. Method down in reply #8.