Painting the colour black is not an easy task. There are a variety of approaches that one can take ranging from a matte effect, through to using greys to build up the colour to pure black, and then there's the shiny black effects.
For my Raven Guard squad for my Shattered Legions forces, I wanted to do something a bit different. I started with a matt approach and used a very dark blue for azimuthal spray painting from above - in fact it is very almost black in most regards, but just enough blue to take away the absolute nature of the black paint. There's also hints of silvers contained in it too. This approach gives a strong black colour synonymous with the Raven Guard, without it looking too much like that I've just slapped on pure black and not attended to any highlights.
Lowlights were handled with plentiful Nuln oil across all of the miniature. This gives the recesses a reflective look, which I find pleasing.
The real offset colour here though has to be the dirt. Using two tones of brown, I sprayed the base and legs to give a very dirty feeling to the miniature. This is to accentuate background of the marine having seen plentiful action on the plains of Isstvan 5. Final highlighting was done using silver to pick out some battle damage - e.g., on the top of the knee pads due to crawling through the dirt too much whilst taking cover. Decals on the shoulder pad and white highlights, coupled with red to orange eye lenses finish off the piece. Overall, the miniature avoids the pure black look associated with under painted Raven Guard, whilst creating a work that reflects the survival of the few legionaries on the surface of the planet, and complements that of their cousins in the Salamanders legion.
The link back to the assembled miniature is here, for reference.
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