"Painting in black and white" Topic

For Pulp era gaming, to capture that old movie feel, has anyone ever painted some of their miniatures in shades of gray? If so, are there any pointers that can be shared?

There is some information in this previous topic, which itself refers to other previous topics

TMP link

and superbly

link

You may want to download issue 3 of Wargames Painting and Modelling. Has a great article about painting in greyscale, and it's free.
link

very cool stuff. Interesting Idea too for the Pulp stuff.

It looks cool, but I'd guess that it would be difficult to pull off and make the finished result look good.

I've seen a 20mm fighting seabees game at Rock Con in Ill that was done in B/W. It looked spectacular. Caught everyone's eye when people saw it.

I've thought about doing a Seven Samuarai game in b/w but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Way back when the OFM was a boy, film makers would buy "black-and-white glasses" These were filtered lenses that allowed them to see the world as a black and white value scale. Thus they knew what their sets would look like when filmed. Maybe if you ot a bunch of these for your players you would't need to paint in grey scale?

Actually my tip is to get a pece of red plexi-glass and an artists value scale. The former allows you to see value dferences in colour images moe easily. The latter is basicaly a strip of card painted in a graduated series of greys from black to white, each with a view hole punched in it. Using these two in combination with black and white reference photos will be a great aid in getting the values on your figures correct.

Value being the darkness or lightness of a colour. Easiest to judge in black and wite, not so easy to judge when comparing say red and green.

Honestly, painting in B&W is easier than you think. You really don't need to find the gray-scale equivalent of any color (unless you're going for ultra realism.) Just dig out your black, white and some gray paints, and have a go! If this is for tabletop gaming, I suggest doing everything in B&W. The effect is diminished if you have you B&W figures fighting around color cars and buildings.

btw, I wrote that Wargames Painting and Modelling article. (and I was certainly not the first to paint in B&W. There was a WWII diorama somewhere ((lost to me now EDIT: The very diorama Chortle has linked to!)) on the Internet that inspired me to paint my Copplestone Gangsters the same way. That diorama was painted MUCH better than anything I've ever done.)

I remember all of that, really outstanding stuff Evilcartoonist. And for the geek record the human eye can only differentiate 8 or 18 scales of gray vs millions of color scales so actualy your eye blends most of the grays anyway. Whatever the reason it looks cool for the genre, and your stuff is awesome.