How do you work with black?

[Countersnipe]

I just tried to paint clothing with black and got a pretty decent result using the following rough mixture:
1 - Flat Yellow
2 - Flat Red
3 - Flat Blue
1 - Dark Red
1 - Flat Green
1 - Pure Black.

I then added small quantities of pure white to the mixture and layered up.

Some things I noticed:
1) The gray tones were slightly blue. They didn't look like an industrial/mechanical gray.
2) If I kept adding white, the mixture eventually turned into a sky blue color.

Once I finish the model I'll post pictures. I'm just wondering how you guys go about painting black. Maybe it's similar to this, maybe it's different. I'd appreciate some tips on it because I'm interested in buying a 54mm from Reaper, and I want to paint it mostly black

Thanks.

 

[Wyrmypops]

This topic comes up occasionally, a search might find you some nifty posts.

I like to consider the texture being painted.
Grey highlights tend to suggest an artificial surface, plastic of some kind.
Blue in the mix can create an interesting effect on leathers. It's a common enough filter in photography with leather subjects, also evokes colour palettes from movies like Batman/Underworld.
A dirty yellow (bubonic brown, bone) in the highlight process can work well for a naturalistic texture, like cloth.
Turquoise is a great colour for highlights as it doesn't really evoke anything. Nothing we have around is a really dark turquoise (except faded tattoos). That's a go-to process when no other factors are immediately applicable.
P3's Coal Black is excellent in that regard, it's already a dark turquoise so cut down on a lot of the fiddlier mixing between black/turquoise/white amounts.
GW's Dark Reaper paint from the layer range works similarly. Is more like a very dark blue-grey than turquoise but is quite satisfactory in making an interesting without distracting black highlight.

In any case, it's not uncommon for the end result to look over-highlighted. A bit of thinned black wash applied as a glaze can push it all down a notch.

 

[Demihuman]

Yeah, texture is huge.

I have a quicky Reaper recipe for shiny black leather:

Base coat solid pure black, Then highlight a progressively smaller area with the Stone Grey triad:

Shadowed stone
Stone Grey
Weathered stone

You can add a tiny bit more white but you really don't need too.

Looks just like shiny boots or a motorcycle jacket. Great for the Orks

 

[Zab]

These are all great tips and I am stealing them all. Beats my "cry over the model and scream at my brushes" technique

 

[Webmonkey]

How do you work with black?

I put some on my brush,.. and then apply to model,... lol

 

[MythBeasts]

Generally for me there are two ways depending on what I'm painting:

Artificial objects:
such as rubber, metal, plastic, paint (like painted vehicle).
For these I just use straight black with greys for the highlights because I believe artificial objects are pure black like the pure black acrylic paint which is of course artificial.

Natural objects:
such as wood, plants, flesh, hair, fur,
For these I use a lot of dark Prussian blue, a medium amount of deep cadmium red (GW Wazdakka red? Vallejo GC Gory Red?) with a touch of flat yellow. This will give a very dark brown almost black. In nature there is no true black like in artificial objects just deep browns (or perhaps greens). For example a bumble bee doesn't have black stripes but very dark brown stripes which is evident under a microscope when light hits it.*

I regards to your mixture, you may want to add more black and red because leather is one of those which I put under both categories so I would look at adding more red and black. Or basically get more browny greys as a highlight for that 'industrial look'.

*I know we're not likely to be painting bumble bees but this is what I learnt from wildlife/ plantlife art school.

 

[Matt Cexwish]

I think that this is highly relevant to the Question on how to paint Black......

http://massivevoodoo.blogspot.de/2014/05/tutorial-painting-colour-black.html