Tutorial: Highlighting black, quick & effective

Welcome to my first try at writing a tutorial, this specific one on how to achieve a good looking highlight of black (well at least in my opinion ;-) when painting tabletop standard. It is especially effective when speed painting, like in my case an mob of Orcs with worn down black leather clothes...

First of all, to achieve the result i use the following techniques:
- Drybrush
- Fine line painting
- Washing

If you are unfamiliar with the techniques, google them for the quickest guide. I will probably give describing them a try later but right now we will focus on the highlighting of black.

All the paints are diluted with either water or Lahmian Medium (paint thinner).

The paints I have used for this specific highlight is:
- Imperial Primer
- Eshin Grey
- Dawnstone Grey
- Nuln Oil

This will give the black a "natural" grey scale type of highlight. Other shades of very can be used for different effects. For example russ grey and fenris very for a bluish highlight. One that I personally use fir Night Goblins. You can even use the same technique with different browns for a different effect altogether.


Step 1 - Basecoat
The entire miniature is primed with Chaos Black primer spray, after the the undercoat is dry i go over the model with Imperial Primer diluted with water to cover any areas the spray paint missed.

Step 2 - Drybrush layer1

Using Eshin grey I drybrysh the clothes portion of the model, wherever i can find creases and wrinkles. I use quite a large brush during this step for efficiency. Be generous with your brushstrokes and leave only the entire flat surfaces with pure black. Don't worry though if some areas not intended catch some grey paint. That will be fixed later on... 

Step 3 - Drybrush layer 2

Now drybrush over the provisos layer of grey with Dawnstone. Be more "detailed" when executing this step. I use a smaller brush to be able to control where the pigment sticks when executing this layer of dry brush,
That will do two things, a) create a feal for a blended dry brush from black to light grey b) really accentuate the sharp edges on the parts you are painting.

Step 4 - Fine line deatils
After the 2nd layer of drybrush has dried. Its time for some really challenging work. Bring our Dawnstone again, pick a small fine tipped brush and paint as thin as you can one the very edges of the details.
If you compare the picture in step 3 with step 4 you will see a difference in contrast of the most accentuated details.

Fine line hitghliting, is very tricky and takes a LOT of practice to master so do not get discouraged if your first try is not perfect. Tee final outcome will look good, I promise ;-)

Step 5 - Blend layers by washing
After all the previous steps we have very grey looking black clothes. Washes are usually best for shading but in this case it will actually server two purposes. Shading and blending the different layers together.

I use Nuln Oil dilluted 1:1 with Lahmian medium, to wash the entire clothes section of the miniature. Dont hold back with wash in this section, the excess will dry away to a good finish once you are done.

Once dry you have the above result, quiack and easy!

There are for sure ways to get black look a lot better, but as i am finishing up to get an army going i dont want to spend to much time on tabletob standard regular orks!

Let me know if anythign can be changed to the better, or share your advice on how to highlight black.