"Black and White painting" Topic

I saw that Foundry is selling black and white paint. I KNOW it is because these colors get used a lot but this got me thinking (which is bad).

There is the whole NMM craze right now and it has been suggested that NMM is good because it allows the "artist" to show their painting skill. Personally, I think NMM is ugly, but that's not my point.

What I'm really wondering is: Have any miniatures painters tried to paint a black & white miniature? You know, like an old B&W photograph?

That might be another way for the artist to show their skill as I'm sure it is difficult as well as unique.

Hmm.

I DID once think about putting on a stage play where everything was in black and white...

Miniatures used to be painted in B&W before colour was invented in the early 30's :-)

apparently....years ago in the days of B/W tv, the BBC set designs were all painted in B/W/greys, to gauge correct tonal values etc. I believe there were complaints that everything looked very depressing. The art department therefore came up with a paint scheme, where colours were used that matched the relevant grey tones...which cheered everybody up! I do like a happy ending :)

What is NMM?

Non-Metallic Metal. First developed for simulating metal in painted pictures, it is now used to paint metal on figures. As opposed to using metal flake paint.

See this link:

link

I have often considered painting my WW2 minis (28mm) in Black and white, so that I can the feel of a WW2 movie. I haven't done it yet, but I think a game done in all B&W would be very striking.

Maybe for WW1 or another period, or even cowboys and indians.

Yoda flies

Not a gaming figure, but someone did a Creature From the Black Lagoon in B&W to match the film ( I suppose the model was already in 3D :- ) ) . See link

Many years ago, at Salute (when it was still in Kensington town hall), someone did a stagecoach game where the stage stayed in the centre of the table, and the pursuing injuns moved relative to it. All the models were painted in black and white and grey, so it looked like an old Western.

Hehehehe at one point I was going to do a "Lawrence of Arabia" or "Charge of the Light Brigade" black and white movie HOTT army.

"Many years ago, at Salute (when it was still in Kensington town hall), someone did a stagecoach game where the stage stayed in the centre of the table, and the pursuing injuns moved relative to it. All the models were painted in black and white and grey, so it looked like an old Western."

That was us. The Staines Wargamers. It all came out of a conversation where, having decided on the game and bought the figures, people started painting them. The first question asked was "What colour should the stage coach be?". The reply was:

"What colour was it in the film?"

You could see the lightbulbs go on over several people's heads :-)

Apparently the people painting the 36 Indians went mental trying to do the various shades of grey required to make them look right :-)

Although the stagecoach was fixed to the board, there was a little motor under it that rotated the wheels. Backwards, of course, so they loked like they were going past at 24 frames per second.

The game won Most Innovative Game at that year's Salute.

I always wanted to do some PIs and gangsters in B&W too. I asked about B&W painting on r.g.m.h several years ago and someone mentioned a big WWII game done in B&W at a con -- based on a John Wayne movie, I think.

I've done this. I did it as a gag to prove to a color-blind friend of mine that he didn't need a full range of colors to paint minis well.

I was right -- they're very nice.

The originals were Clan War Deathseekers. I have since done the same thing with a bunch of Wraiths.

there's a euromodelissimo on painting in monochrome.
Its for display, rather then gaming.

I think that it would take more time than painting at full colour, but I`ve already thinked that idea. It may be useful to improve the NMM tecnhique and the layering too.

If you have a wide enough palette of grays, then it doesn't take any more time. Well, it might the first time, but I haven't had problems since.

How far back do you have to go before its OK to use Sepia ?
WWI ?

Ive done grey sci-fi figs Camoflaged to match the grey planet (moon)terraign the were standing on . The weird thing was more eye-catching than its more colourful brethren in the room .

Velbor --

You're right. It's one of the reasons I did them on Wraiths. I'm running an RPG game where the Wraiths are the big bad guys, and they get surrounded by dozens of mooks.

Meiczyslaw, do you have photos of any of those? They'd be neat to see.

Skeletons!

seankreynolds --

I do not currently have pictures of them, but this can be remedied when I get home tonight. Watch this space. At worst, they'll be up tomorrow.

major blunder --

I have actually been thinking about this the undead. The most recent Wraiths that I painted with this scheme were quickly done; I did the prime black and dry-brush up scheme. Based on this experience, I'm thinking that skeletons and zombies will paint up quickly. Save the color for any necromancers in the group, and maybe a splash of red on the vamires ...

I don't have enough time to paint everything I want to! ;)

(Yeah, yeah. Common lament around here.)

Pat Deluhery of our W. Mass. group has done several of the Andrea 54mm movie characters in "black and white", including Dracula, Frankenstein and the Mummy, and a bust of Bogart as Sam Spade. The effect is very striking when displayed together. Pat's inspirstion was simple: "That's how I saw these characters!"

As others have mentioned, the exercise is very good for reinforcing the painter's mantra of "there is no such color as black or white"; everything is shades of grey. Effective shading of all shapes, and a defined "light source", is critical to pulling off this trick, however.

A box diorama, with controlled lighting, might be the best place to display such figures. Just out on the table, without an appropriate enforced context, is much more difficult.

Wish I had seen the stagecoach setup - sounds like a tremendous amount of work for all involved. I'm not suprised it was recognized with an award!

As promised, I've got some pics up on the web. Sadly, I'm an atrocious photographer -- that, and my camera kept focusing on the backdrop I was using. It's located at:

link

Hopefully, it's good enough for y'all to get an idea of what these things look like.

I have the Modelissmo book on B&W painting. He does actually use color, just very little and it's muted.

It is a good book though because it's written by one man who talks about his painting style and what colors he used to do each part of each figure. He does do a Teutonic Knight at the end of the book in B&W and it's awesome.

A good book if you can find it.

Weird, the colors of the minis look subtly maroon on my computer. :)

Seankreynolds -- same on mine. Only not so subtle. Even the "white" was salmon.

Holy cow.

I just took a look at it on my PC at work, and you're right. These aren't the same colors that show up on my Mac at home.

How weird. I wonder what would happen if I made them PNG's instead of JPG's.

Your Mac is probably setup for page layout or prepress work, isn't it? Your colors aren't the same as those displayed on PCs- you probably have Page White color-correction turned on (it's the standard setting for Mac video cards). It's great for knowing that something will print well, but horrible if you're doing Web work, where you have to make all colors "correct" for the Microshaft world :-D

I wouldn't make them PNG... they'll just get hugely bloated :-) Instead, take the originals and re-balance the color using Photoshop, if you have it. Just my two cents, of course, but I suspect that the PNGs won't be right, either, unless you correct the Mac's color display for PC-like quality.

Another factor that might be contributing is whether Quicktime has been updated to the latest greatest. Apple's Quicktime JPEG compressor seems to have gone through several revisions... maybe you've got an older version and it's not dithering for web use well :-)

I've done this on ghosts and banshees as well as some Dark Eldar Mandrakes whom I wanted to look transparent.

A very good local miniature painter once painted a 90mm figure ranging from white to black with about three grays in between. Once he had the figure done, Scott used this as a basis for determining where to put on the normal colors. The results were great, but he felt it was too much trouble to try again. I think the technique is called 'griselle.'

I did an Undead Blood Bowl team in Black & White, for the same old movie effect others have mentioned.
I kind of found that you have to be careful with some of the 'bluer' greys, that tends to spoil the effect somewhat.

Better to stick with just black and white, using the white to gradually lighten the black.
Mixing a little silver in here and there can lead to some interesting highligts, they don't call it the 'Silver Screen' for nothing.

You can also get fairly striking results just washing thin black over a white undercoat.