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Hi i'm working on painting Imperial Assault and i've come to an impasse on the officers. I've decided to go with a black uniform but i'm not sure what I would do to get the best results painting a mini that is mostly black. Would you do a black base then highlight with grey? would you base grey then wash with black? what are your opinions on painting a black uniform?

I'll just throw in my 0 cents and say that I'm also interested in others' techniques on painting black.

The way I've done it so far is to paint black and highlight with a very dark grey. In the past I would think the dark grey was not enough contrast and go with a lighter grey. To get the best of both worlds I think you have to do two layers of highlights, a very dark grey frequently, and a lighter grey on only some accents. This however is of course time consuming and hard when you are highlighting something that doesn't have hard edges like a cloth uniform.

So you could do the paint black, and edge highlight grey. Great example would be a Black Templar marine. Games Workshop even has a video on youtube how to do it.

Another idea would be something that Paradigm would paint. I will link is P&M blog. No idea how to paint his style though, but he is good

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/615960.page

I quite like basing with a dark grey then putting a black wash over it. Then when it's dry painting more wash just into the areas of shade to deepen the shadows. Then a highlight of grey just on the lighter areas. If I'm painting armour, which would have a more reflective finish than cloth, I'll sometimes use a completely different method, and highlight up from black by mixing a sky blue into the black. In theory this is like the sky reflecting on the armour.

You don't half like making life difficult for yourself though! Black can be quite hard to paint well without it ending up looking grey. Judging how far to go with the highlights can be quite tricky.

Good luck with it! You're taking the exact same route into the hobby as I did a couple of years ago. I bought Imperial Assault, decided to try to paint a few of the models, and before I knew it, I had several hundred miniatures from a dozen different games and manufacturers, a table in my house which is exclusively designated for painting, and I'm entering the dakka monthly competition every month. So be warned - you might get hooked!

For my Mordheim Averlanders, I used Eshin Grey flollowed by a few layers of Nuln Oil to darken it down to near black, but not so dark you can't see the details. Personally, I really don't like edge highlighting.

I am going to offer some unconventional advice and say DON'T highlight it with dark grey (especially Eshin Grey).

Instead highlight it straight with Fenrisian Grey (which is a pale sky blue) straight out the pot (don't even water it down).

The reasoning to my madness: Unless you're trying to win the Crystal Brush with these and going for a steady blend from dark grey through to sky blue to white, there is no point highlighting black with dark grey especially if that's all you're going to do. That's a one way ticket to nobody seeing you've done anything and having minis that don't look great on the table top. Instead you want the detail to pop at a distance, and to do that you'll want to skip straight to the sky blue (or Fenrisian Grey as my choice) and apply it in extremely thin lines and dots to bring out all the detail. If you want to go even further you can dot the edges and highest points with off-white (I choose pallid wytch flesh).

Here are some examples: the models boots have been painted with Fenrisian Grey as a highlight and no dark grey.



I hope this is useful. BE BOLD!

@Bottle

I'll have to try that with my Chaos Warriors! Though I might add a wide layer of darker grey beforehand to soften the transition.