Highlighting black

[kingzerno]

So my tau army are wearing black trousers and the fireblades have black capes. I want to highlight these to make them look less solid and not like I couldn't be bothered with them. I've tried highlighting with two shades of grey (quite light) and it just looks like they are wearing camo! Which is not what I want!

Suggestions would be welcome! (I'm not set on grey as a highlight, I did consider purple)

bear in mind I am at best an "average" painter and don't tend to put more than 2-3 shades of paint on any area (I lack the patience)

 

[MAXXxxx]

- One of the tricks of black is to limit the area used by other colors, so that about 75% remains pure black.
- The other would be to start from VMC-BlackGrey (very dark grey), highlight 1x with a lighter one (VMC-DarkSeaGreen is super for this, despite the name it's a grey color) on a relative small area (remember at least 50%, but better 75% should be black) and wash with black (AP-DarkTone ink, or GW-NulnOil). If you want stronger highlights then use some light grey (any really), but on a very small 'area' (line).

3rd ist the GW way:
- black base
- eshin grey HL (about the same lightness as darkseagreen, sometimes even GW stops here)
- dawnstone HL

 

[kingzerno]

Thanks Maxx. I'll give that a try and see how good/bad it turns out >.< *grumbles* stupid black cloth *grumbles*

 

[Yogie Bear]

A bit of blue in the highlight works well as well.

 

[Daegond]

A bit of blue in the highlight works well as well.

A lot of natural shades of black tend to have a bit of color in them, so depending on the mini or context you could get away with very dark greens and reds too. If you do an image search of animals/pelts you'll see lots of neat shades buried in the black.

When it comes to black in general, I don't usually use black as the base-coat. By lightening it up a little bit with some grey it allows you to put the true black down into the deep recesses of the cloth/folds. I think it helps out when giving the illusion of depth. But that's my two cents.

 

[khadoor]

practice the art of glazing or block in then glaze down.. or underpaint!

 

[Alowan]

+1 for the blue tint in the shades. Somehow seems to make them look "blacker"

 

[kingzerno]

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I will be coming back to test these on some models once I;ve got the bulk of the painting done. got to get it ready for a tournament so worst case I will just leave it as a black undercoat. I'm hopfeul of finding time to add some hightlights!

 

[MAXXxxx]

+1 for the blue tint in the shades. Somehow seems to make them look "blacker"

also + for the blue tint, BUT, the suggested greys (despite the name deepseagreen, eshin grey) are blue-greys.