NAZGUL

[vikotnik]

Man, these buggers are extremely hard to paint!

Last weekend, I talked with a friend about painting Nazgul. We discussed some of the techniques he used on his miniatures and both wondered about how to leave the impression of a black fabric on a miniature without actually using pure black paint.
I had to give it a try then and a few fruit teas later, I came up with this result:



The inside of the cowl was NOT photoshopped, I simply grinded it out deeply enough to  allow no light to be reflected from the inside.

...only eight to go...

[Chien Sauvage]

Wouah...great painting. Mine, is just black and grey, when i see that, i want to try to paint  my Nazgul an another time.

Chien sauvage

[Buzgob]

Beautiful!!! But... what colors and techniques did you end up using? Care to share?

[Hammers]

The inside of the cowl was NOT photoshopped, I simply grinded it out deeply enough to  allow no light to be reflected from the inside.

Good idea!

[vikotnik]

@ Buzgob:
Sure! I used two or three heavily diluted black washes over white primer. The contrasts started to show up as usual. I then understood that black fabric has very low contrast, which was the key to painting this one successfully!!

After another two or three washes, I was satisfied. Time to do the highlights. I used three different colours for them: VGC Sombre Grey, VGC Bone White, VGC Earth.
Earth was used at the bottom of the cloth, while grey was used in the middle sections. Finally, Bone White was added to the grey in the top sections. If You look closely, You will surely notice the system behind this madness...
That's about it. No big deal really.

@Others: Thanx for the nice comments!

[Westfalia Chris]

I really like this mini, although I don´t think that it looks "black" - however, it looks very, very shadowy, nay, sinister, so it´s a perfect effect. And it looks far better than the overwhelming majority of grey-shaded Nazgulim I´ve seen (and I´ve painted my share of those, too).

[Buzgob]

Thanks for sharing, Vikotnik  

[Neldoreth]

I love it, it looks great! Looking forward to seeing more of you Lord of the Rings stuff!

n.