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Looming up in my painting que I have a bunch of Shadow ships from B5 and was hoping to garner some advice on the best way of going about them to add some depth to the model. A simple drybush of grey over the top of a black base coat doesn't look the best so was wondering if anyone had some other ideas?

For reference this is what Shadows look like and what I am aiming for;

Almost black grey as a base and then several coats of black ink wash might work, I also tend to highlight with a dark blue

 ingtaer wrote:
Looming up in my painting que I have a bunch of Shadow ships from B5 and was hoping to garner some advice on the best way of going about them to add some depth to the model. A simple drybush of grey over the top of a black base coat doesn't look the best so was wondering if anyone had some other ideas?

For reference this is what Shadows look like and what I am aiming for;

If you'll note, the ships there aren't black - they are a dark grey with black in the recesses and a lighter grey in the highlights. That's pretty much the formula you want to follow

To highlight my Sisters of Battle and their black armour I did an edge highlight with dark blue with a small amount of light grey added. Highlights the black without making it look like it is a grey highlight.

My two cents,

CB

Feathered highlights through grey then off white, then blue glazes.

Start with a medium to dark grey, and wash with Nuln Oil. May need two coats of oil, but the edges will keep a muted highlight.

One of the things I’m experimenting on with Deathwatch is using Stegadon scale green with a heavy black wash as my basecoat and highlights with the grayish-blues.

I've had success by painting black using abaddon black, glazing it with one or two layers of drakenhof nightshade or druchii violet. Then highighting with dark reaper/eshin grey.

Nothing is ever truly 'black' unless it is completely unlit. Paint them dark grey, using black for shading and a lighter grey for highlighting, and your brain will interpret it as black.

What I do for my Tau black cloth is water black paint down 1:1 (paint:water) and wash it over a light grey basecoat (in this case, Dawnstone). Once it's dry I drybrush Dawnstone over the cloth as a highlight.

Babylon 5 ships are small enough this should work well enough.

For my Deathwatch and my chaplains what I do is this


Spray/undercoat with Chaos Black, or really, any black.
Paint the entire model with a pot black (Abaddon Black, for example). This is to ensure any clean-up has the same finish, but only necessary if you think you're going to mess up the paint.
Take a grey, not too bright or dark, and mix 1:1 with black. Drybrush all the black with this.
Take the grey on its own and give a lighter drybrush.
Wash everything with black wash.
If desired, drybrush with the grey again but only lightly.


This achieves good depth. You have the wash settle in the recesses and giving it the darkest possible. Then you have slightly lighter panels with the same finish as the recesses so doesn't look out of place. Then the edges are slightly lighter, but blended due to the wash and also have the same finish.

Nothing is darker then black. (Theoreticla onyx paint or what it is called is out of this discussion.)

You can work adictivly, adding more colour like when you highlight. Or you can work substractivly where you remove colour. You can use a was for this.

I would recomend painting it in an almost black. Highlight it, and wash it with black. Perhaps highlight is as well. If your base colour has a little bit of colour tint in it (white black is a very dull grey) it will apear black when contrasting against other objects.

If you want premixed options start with a dark tone. Something like P3 coal black or P3 Umbral Umber. Citadel similar would be colors like Rinox Hide + Abaddon Black 70/30 or so. The shade with black.

From Vallejo there are a ton of "near blacks" which are great from Basalt onwards offering warm and cold blacks.

Black is never black. start with your mid tone color and work down to black and use very spare highlighting.