Well not much to report right now. I have had little time or inspiration to work on minis. When I do get time I tend to work a bit on some black and then quit in frustration. I have done a few trial pieces and have not been satisfied with anything I have..so no pictures.
You see the problem I have is two fold. First off, you can not shade and highlight black like you do other colors. Normally you have your base color then a shade and a highlight. The highlight is simple. The shade not so much. What do you add to black to make a shadow? So after a bit of hard headed struggling I gave it up. The other problem I have is that I am not terribly hot for the traditional hard edge lining that most people use for black.
So what am I going to do? Well the last couple of test models I have worked on (and I think the count now is up to 9 or 10) I am using a bit of a mix. Instead of hard lining both the top and bottom edges of the model I am only hitting the areas that would get light. For the most part that means just the top edges. In addition to that I will be hitting some of the larger flat areas with some normal shading to try to give a nice contrast. Could this work? I hope so. It could also lead to test models 11 and 12. Hopefully I can get something to a point where I take some pics for you soon.
4 comments:
The example in the last post looks great. Have you tried mixing in a color with the black? This site is in your blogroll, so you've undoubtedly seen this already:
Brush Brothers Death Company
Brush Brothers dude on GW site, again, Death Company about halfway down
I thought the black plus regal blue effect was pretty awesome. Almost a comic book shine look. I think this guy is doing something similar, but maybe a little overboard:
Tower of Heroes Orks
I do thing the black/blue mix is more effective for certain armies. It has kind of a 'clean' feel that looks a little out of place on Orks.
I wanted to try something like this on Ghaz's armor, but modified to be dirty, and made my black by mixing black and calthan 1:1. I found though that I'm too unpracticed (I suck) at using the thin glazes. I pressed on using the layering technique I've fallen into, edge highlighting with Khemri.
Anyway, I want to try it again on some marines in the future. That means you need to keep going on this so I can just rip off your technique later (attempt to anyway).
Oddly enough...that brush brothers post was before I really paid much attention to blogs. So even though I have the blog linked in the blogroll I did not actually see the post.
This throws a completely different stone in the pond now. Guess test 11-12 will be on deck tonight.
I didn't notice this earlier, but the link that goes to the GW site shows his new technique for black (on left) next to what I assume is his earlier technique (right)...the traditional hard edge lining I think you're talking about.
Of course, the minis on the left still have edge highlighting, but I'd say it's more subtle, and mixed with the zenithal HL, more natural looking, an overall better effect...because there's nothing wrong with spending 3 months on one model, right?
If your looking for the hurry up and paint your stuff like crap sight *Cough* Stricly Average *Couch*, your in the wrong place.
I say take as long as you need to get the model where you want. If that is 3 months, so be it.
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