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Hey all

So my colour scheme is mostly black. But my blacks are really coming out flat..
I cant seem to get a knack of edging it properly. I tried various shades of gray but always come up really jarring and too bright for my liking or not noticeable enough.

Does anyone have any hacks/tips?

*not a painter*

Have you tried doing an edge and then using a watered down mix with a black wash? If you were to put the highlights on you could then use the watered down black wash in layers, letting each one dry and building up to get a less jarring effect; then perhaps go over with a very thin final lighter edge to the very tips/edges on some parts.

don't base coat with black. instead use a very, very dark grey. that way you can should be able shade as well as highlight.

nah, you can use black as a base colour. just use blue in your highlights instead of pure grey.

So, here's an example of how I paint my blacks.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/1000305-.html

As other posters have pointed out, with black, you can't shade darker. For me, that means you've gotta work every detail up from nothing, which can be a little daunting. However, I think It's more than doable.

I use citadel paints, so I'm gonna be listing them.

First up, base black. After that, a highlight of eshin grey. I use quite thick lines of this, on EVERY edge, or surface I want to stand out. For more gentle curves, such as the domed part at the top of a space marines's helmet, this might be the only highlight, but the important thing at this stage is to be GENEROUS with the edge highlighting. Every detail you don't do here is lost, so be indiscriminate.

Next, I do a thinner layer of Dawnstone, again, on (almost) every edge. With other paints, this more extreme highlight is mostly only for sharper corners etc, but I find with blacks that it's worth doing this all over, more or less, to preserve this detail.

To go the extra mile, if you've got the time, nuln oil wash, just to tidy those highlights up a little, and maybe another layer of dawnstone or even administratum grey!

Thank you guys, that was very helpful. (Especially posermcbogus - I will try your recipe for sure).

Gott mull this over... And pick up a paint or two.

I've recently been using GW's dark reaper to highlight black. It's a grey/blue mix and it's quite nice. I've tried Eshin grey as well and that's a bit more of a black/grey.

Here is my chaplain highlighted with dark reaper. It softens the black a little, makes it less stark.





Another option, going in an entirely different direction, would be to highlight your black with silver. Give it a metallic feel.

Here you go:

https://massivevoodoo.blogspot.com/2014/05/tutorial-painting-colour-black.html

That's the most comprehensive guide I can remember seeing.

I use eshin grey to highlight black, before I got the grey I used to use etherium blue dry

Dawnstone is your best friend if you're using a black scheme.

+1 for Dark Reaper, that's a great starting highlight to work up from.

I personally use Blue horror to highlight black. Before the GW paint repackaging a few months back, it was in their "edge" line.

You can highlight Black into anything you want tbh, that's how Drukhari are usually painted. You can even tint shadows with color as well. As long as midtone would be black, miniature will look black.