Anyone have any good tips for painting Space Marines black. I read the GW thread but didnt get it to work too well. My models eihter look black and without detail or grey. I cant get used to extreme highlighting. The very fine brushstrokes it takes are difficult for me to get right. I have some problems with tendonitis in my hands and finger so I cant spend hours painting one mini or do lots of detail work. Drybrushing produces spotty and grey looking figures. Any suggestions?

An interesting, quick and simple way to highlight black is:

Make sure the black areas are clean and free of other colours.
Paint the top 50% of each surface with the dark GW Foundation grey (Adeptus Battlegrey, I believe).
Then paint the top 25% of the surface with Codex Grey. This is all out highlighting done... You should have something that looks fairly greyish now, but bear with me.
Wash all of the black sections (the entire section, including where we just painted grey) with Badab Black.
Once it is dry, wash it again, concentrating on the lower parts of the black sections.

Repeat the washes for as long as it takes to somewhat hide the 'joins' between the greys and the black.

This is a somewhat simplified version of how I painted this fella:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v163/minus-t/apothecary/apothecary3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v163/minus-t/apothecary/apothecary4.jpg


Hope that was of some use to you, and good luck!

-t.

That's an interesting method you got there, Mr. T.

What are the odds of us seeing step-by-step photos of it?

Certainly could happen, I'll see if I can postpone further work on my Tactical Squad 'til my next day off, and take photos of the process as I go... I guess I'm completing the monochrome set, eh?

What i actually did involved rather more layering, but the washes to help blend them worked much better than I was expecting.
I also helped it pop by adding some extreme highlights with pure Codex...

-t.

They've got a good, if not a little complicated guide over at brush thralls.

Painting Black*-*BrushThralls.com (http://www.brushthralls.com/painting-techniques/painting-black.html)

Hope this helped :soldier:

-Doug.