Making Black Interesting

[Graypaint]

Hey, this is my first post as I haven\'t had much to ask. I am painting up some Flesh Eaters Space Marines and black is a large part of their color scheme. The problem is that I really don\'t want to do a standard base coat of black followed by blue/gray highlighting.

I was thinking that I could use a dark purple shaded with blues to keep it distinct from the dark red that makes up the other major parts of their color scheme. That would also bring some cool tones to the otherwise warm color scheme (I am also going to use golds, probably shaded using mostly reds, though greens as well I suppose).

I really don\'t have any idea how to go about this other than diving in and trying things out, but I thought that there are some really terrific painters at CMON that might have some ideas about a good way to bring some life to straight black armor.

 

[Wombat85]

i have seen people use blue edge highlights to great effect in the place of grey. That is start with a dark blue and then highlight up to a very light blue such as ice blue. It looks very different to the grey.

 

[Graypaint]

My main aversion to using blue-gray highlights is that it might push it too cool.
Whereas I think that using a dark purple base with dark blue as shading would keep some warmth in the black.
I am not sure it will even matter though in the end, I guess I could just try throwing in something warm into my black, I am not actually sure if the black I will be using is cool or warm as I haven\'t experimented too much with it.

 

[Einion]

Originally posted by Graypaint
I was thinking that I could use a dark purple shaded with blues to keep it distinct from the dark red that makes up the other major parts of their color scheme.

You can certainly do that but you do have to be careful not to be too colourful or you end up with something that doesn\'t really appear to be black any more.

When painting black you really need to reserve pure black for the shadows and have enough of it, or it ends up looks like you\'re depicting a dark grey, dark blue or whatever.

Originally posted by Graypaint
I really don\'t have any idea how to go about this other than diving in and trying things out...

Well worth doing. Bottom line for this sort of thing is what you think is all that really counts.

Einion

 

[L.E.J.]

some good ideas floating around.

post us what u come up with as im looking to do some black terminators and had similar worries.

hope they look good

 

[DaN]

In essence, you can use almost any colour to highlight black, depending on what sort of look you\'re going for.

I\'ve seen some Slaanesh pieces with bright pink highlights - which SOUNDS bad - but I thought it worked and looked pretty cool.

Another thing to contemplate is a coloured sheen - like the carapace of a beetle - black for all intents and purposes, but look closer and it can be blue, green, purple... etc

 

[Valander]

None More Black

Black is really an interesting \"color.\"

Technically, black is simply the absence of reflected light, which our eyes interpret as various colors. No reflected light->no color->\"black.\"

Now, it\'s actually pretty difficult to find true black anywhere; most things will reflect a little bit of light, and thus have some kind of color tone to them. If you look around the world at \"black\" things, you\'ll see there are a bunch of different kinds of black--there\'s brown-blacks, blue-blacks, grey-blacks, green-blacks, red-blacks, etc.

So, as DaN said, you really can use just about any color to highlight black. I think the more common colors in \"real life\" tend to have either a brown or green tint to them, but purple is definitely not that uncommon. The trick is making sure that the highlights are really only on the most lit portion of the area, so that you don\'t wind up with a \"really dark (color)\". I\'ve found that it helps me to start with the highlight, rather than the black, and then continually add more and more black and wash/glaze until I have it dark enough. This will also help give you smoother transitions, which is really important for black to look good.

Good luck, and hope to see what you come up with!