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Onikaigo

Vampire Lord
True Blood
May 17, 2008
3,604
Germany
I could not foresee this thing happening to you...

Great song. :D

Anyways, that's my question. How do I paint black, without it looking to be a cheap 'Primer and leave it' job?

I'm currently painting a Knight model (For my Carpe Notem theme army, huzzah!) and I want the horse to be Black, obviously. How do I go about this?


There's really very little exposed skin on the horse, mostly throat and the sides of the head; but I want them to be dark colors, without getting that 'Cheap' feel.

Help?
 

untitled_musketeer

Vampire Count
True Blood
Aug 9, 2010
1,426
Huddersfield
Ok the key here is to remember that Black works just like most other colours. The really important thing when you paint black is that it's made up of lots of different shades of grey, depending on how the light hits it. I would use something like Charadon granite as a base that you can then shade and highlight accordingly. Don't be afraid of washes either. I think some of the best models to showcase just what can be done with black are GWs Ring Wraith models. Use them as inspiration and see just how the black varies in shades.

Try and keep your transitions nice and smooth unless, as I've just discovered, you're painting a black reflective surface. Then you follow a similiar route to painting NMM with sometimes stark contrasts of white.
 

Santawraith

Master Liche
True Blood
Jun 6, 2010
7,453
Wyoming
I like to use either reaper's faded black to highlight black, or if you don't have reaper colors, use gw Charadon granite, and if you feel the highlights are too harsh, wash them down with Badab black wash.
 

Onikaigo

Vampire Lord
True Blood
May 17, 2008
3,604
Germany
Thanks, Fellas.

I do have Charadon Granite, so I'll start with that over my already black basecoat. I'm rather limited on my color pallette, but I'll make something work.

I'll show a picture once I get it finished. ;)
 

Boo

Vampire Lord
True Blood
Feb 13, 2008
3,195
The far north, near northrend
Highlighting by mixing more and more gray in to the black works too, finished with a wash of badab black. Or starting with a grey area and washing it with several layers of badab black also works. It all depends on how willing you are to put effort in and how you want the end result to look.
 

Dogmar

Varghulf
Aug 3, 2010
780
I'd do it as U_M or Boo suggested. If you're willing to pull off something extraordinay you could finish your piece (so black, highlighted with greys) with a light wash of dark blue, purple or something similar to get more variation into it. especially with a horse's fur I've experienced that it sometimes shows up other colours than just shades of grey. I don't know why though. If you want to, just try it.
 

Sanai

Stylish Deviant
True Blood
Oct 30, 2009
5,193
Behind Darvy
Make sure you give it a red undercoat first, so you can paint it black.
And make sure that when you paint it that if someone walks by in a summer dress you close your eyes until your darkness goes.
 

Sweeney Todd

Master Vampire
True Blood
Mar 9, 2008
4,034
Singapore
There are several ways to do black. The most commonly used way is black with gray highlights, for a weathered look(depending on the amount of gray you use). using brown should get you a muddy look not all that dissimilar to gray.

Other ways include using blue highlights, or an angry red for the daemonic, straight-from-the-pits-of-hell kinda look. Or green for a generic evil glow.

Click here for an example of 'black-green'

Click here for an example of 'black-blue'

PS: As you can tell I'm not specifically talking about how to do a black horse here. I'm speaking more generally. Hopefully my related tangent isn't what you're not looking for.

PPS: If you want to manually hand apply black I think it's best to start from Charadon Granite or Adeptus Battlegrey. So I'm seconding what others have already said
 

SoulSeeker

Ghoul
Dec 2, 2010
114
A very simple method is to paint it dark grey, then wash once or twice with Badab Black. Simples. xD Gives a nice dark velvet look suited to a horse.
 

Alfika

Skeleton
Jun 15, 2010
66
Jönköping
As SoulSeeker says badab black can give a lot of the job done, as a example my black guards have been painted with chaos black, and then highlighted with cold grey, fortress grey and then skull white, after that I add two layers of badab black.

ai69.photobucket.com_albums_i68_AlFiKa_Dark_20Elves_SkaneCupen_P9170020.jpg
 

count kill alot

Vargheist
May 16, 2010
610
I know this sound strange but if executed correctly it will look awesome, undercoat white:Vampire1:, then take chaos black thin it with water and use as a wash, this technique both shades it and highlights it at the same time, but be careful no more then one brush stroke on the same spot, otherwise it will revert back chaos black and look shiny again.
 

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