Painting black hair

[Cerridwyn1st]

I was in the grocery store last night, and I saw a woman with very long, straight black hair. I noticed that her hair had dark brown highlights. I\'ve also seen dark hair with dark auburn highlights.

Has anyone tried painting black hair and using either dark brown or auburn as highlights?

I\'ve heard of people using grey or blue to highlight black hair, but it never seems to look right to me.

I recently used Vallejo Filthy Brown as a base for a blonde. Washed it with dark brown, and added an ivory color as highlight.

I think the ivory was a little too light for the highlight, so I\'ll probably go over it with the Filthy Brown mixed with ivory instead.

 

[vincegamer]

True black hair is extremely rare in people. It occurs occasionally in some peoples of eastern Asia. Other than that nearly everyone who claims black really has very dark brown hair. Blue is used as a highlight because it is suggestive of truly black hair. Also, it stands out better. Brown highlights, I suspect, would look dull and dirty by comparison. Either way, I think you\'d need to go with a white pinpoint atop your highlight to look like truly glossy black hair.

 

[Mr T]

Hmmm, I think it\'s something you\'d have to experiment with, but I reckon if you used browns to highlight very sparingly it\'d look alright.

 

[Dragonsreach]

A few years ago I worked with an Asian girl who\'s hair was a glossy Jet Black. What highlights came out did often have a blueish cast, but it depended on the type of light we were near.
With working in such a small scale as we do the highlights need to be exagerrated so I\'d tend to paint the hair very dark brown, tone down with a shade wash of black and perhaps rehighlight with the same dark brown.
As I was typing this I realised I\'m sat opposite to a young woman with black hair and the highlights shining are glossy & almost white due to the light source. Something to think about.

 

[FlamerTemplate]

If you highlight it brown it looks merely very dark brown. I haven\'t seen any properly black hair on minis. It just becomes the colour of the highlights you use.
Hmm, you could highlight with... black! No wait, that wouldn\'t work. Godsdamnit!

Anyway, what\'s wrong with blue/black hair? Mine is, although admittedly only through sufferance (purple dye turns my hair red)

FT

 

[zenmaster]

Black hair

I\'ve been thinking about highlighting black hair with brown too. Although I think I might add a little grey to it to take away some of the browness from it. Another thing I\'ve been thinking about highlighitng black with is beige. I think if you use any of these as highlights sparingly it looks right.

 

[Wren]

Vincegamer - what about people who claim their hair is dark brown, but are continually told by others that it is black? This is what happens to me all the time.

I don\'t know how much it\'ll help for painting, but for what it\'s worth, the individual strands of my hair vary from black through various browns to light red (ignoring the encroaching pure white ones). Light-caused highlights are more of an ivory-yellow gleam than the bright white Dragonsreach described on blue-black type hair. The ends, which are about three feet away from and 10 years older than the roots, look a much lighter brown colour when placed next to the roots, but I don\'t think it\'s noticeable otherwise, and that would probably look goofy duplicated on a mini.