"Painting Barsoomian "Black Pirates"" Topic

I'd like to do a set of Bronze Age Minis as "Black Pirates" as in Burrough's "Gods Of Mars" from the "John Carter" trilogy for "Fantastic Worlds", but their skin is…well…black. So what colors and techniques have you all been using to shade black. Picture refs of yours or anybody's would be nice.

You can use black, and mix an elf flesh with it for highlights – as the elf flesh will give you a nice warm highlight.

Reaper also makes a "Dark elf" skin tone triad that is a nice wonderful dark grey witha hint of blue that I think might work well.

I'm sorry I don't have picture references up – but if you use the first method, you can simply lay down a black base coat – mix a little flesh in with the black for the first highlight and start highlighting the muscles and then add a bit more and do a second highlight (you can highlight up s much as you want to, using this method)

I usually use Cel Vinyls Gray 30 for shading black. You can highlight it further by mixing in some more gray shades.

Alternately do blue. Paint it black then mix in some blue, do some highlights, mix in more blue and so on until you get a look you like.

here you have a tutorial from Jenova on painting skin tones that could be useful:
jenova.dk/index.htm