"Help with Black horses!" Topic

I will, soon, paint a grenadiers a cheval unit but i dont feel comfortable with the idea of painting so much too dark horses and a i m afraid that they could look as black primerd horses.
I need some help!

What scale? Something that I tried was painting them black and then hitting raised areas lightly with a dark charcoal gray (on 15mm figs). I was pretty happy witht he results.

Allen

i m painting 28mm

A very dark purple is also a good highlight for black. Use sparingly, of course.

I would prefer to mix some grey, dark brown or such dark colour to tone down a pitch black effect. Dry brushing, I would experiment with a variety of lighter colour; biege, light grey even flesh to highlight the muscle about the legs, chest and hind quarters.

If you want enhance your work further then "feather" lighter shades in place of dry brushing, to highlight.

Cheers,

Well in the first place you could use any type of horse from balck to chesnuts, so it would ot need to be all black (no pun intended). The best way I found for highlighting black is to use a mix of balck and dark blue. Most people use grey to highlight black, but just take a new black shirt and hold it close to a powerful lightsource… It will not look grey but blueish. Grey is only good for faded black, but not for highlights.

Cheers,

Burkhard

Chestnut is the most realistic colour to use for highlighting any black animals. If you see the real ones closely in sunlight you'll see that colour is actually in their hair/fur.

I drybrush fine highlights on, plus use a little burnt umber to shadow recesses.

GW's foundation colour Charadon Granite is pretty good for highlighting black, as is Cel Vinyl's Gray 30. Stiple the horses with it.

Dry-brushing GW Shadow Grey over a black base gives a decent result.

WARNING – SHAMELESS PLUG FOLLOWS:

Stone Mountain's Colors line has 8 different horse colors including an equine black which has the blue undertone seen in real horses.

Dave
HistoricalMiniatures.com

I'll attest to Stone Mountain's colors. I love them and they're about all I use, except for colors they don't make. I even asked Dave kindly and he came up with Buff for me, which he didn't carry prior to my request!

I find dark blue is the best highlight for black horses. If you look at a black horse in the sunlight, like Brooklyns shirt, the lighter areas look closer to blue than grey or black.

I paint my black horses charcoal. That way real black shows up as black. You can highlight with a slighty lighter charcoal or grey if you want.

I use black and then a dark charcoal…What is the maker of your figures? Some horses and figures are much easier to paint because of the way they are sculpt.

Front rank. Perry s are painted, but the bleck one looks too gray instead of black…

I will try to combine some of your advices all in one unit, some black-darkbrown, some black-blue, some black-chesnut, some black-grey…

i will show you soon

For quick black 28mm horses I spray paint black, then paint the horse with Vallejo German Grey, leaving the leatherwork and eyes black. I the "magic wash" the entire horse with black diluted in a mixture of Future floor polish and water. The wash flows in to the recesses and thus shows the muscles of the horse. It also leaves a sheen, depending on how much water one uses. You can then highlight using many of the suggested methods, but i usually don't bother.

Black with blue highlights for me. Looks just like the one we have in the pasture.

With horses – especially monotone horses…you want to make sure that they have good musculature, otherwise you will pull your hair out trying to get it to look right.

On the black, it should be black-black.

Black with dark blue-grey highlights

So-called "black" horses were mostly very dark browns. For those, undercoat black and use various shades of brown highlights, mostly very dark.

Only a minority of "black" horses were truly black. For those, use very dark blue highlights. You might want to add a very sparse second coat of vdb, with a touch of white.

For further distinctions, there are facial markings and socks.

No two horses in the same unit should be painted identically.

That's not a law, just a goal.

uf, that is a real chalenge, 12 different black horses on the same unit…

Hi

A dark blue WASH works well.

If the dark blue is thinned about 3 parts water to 1 part paint (this will vary depending on brand/consistency) you get a subtle effect which is pleasing to the eye, realistic in application and not obvious.

When using dark grey (even VERY dark) to highlight I find that you loose what you was originally after: a black horse!

12 different horses;

4 of dark brown, different blazes and sock patterns.

4 of dark brown (different shade), rest as above.

4 pure black, dark blue wash or highlights, different blazes and sock patterns.

According to KT Tunstall, they should be accompanied by a cherrry tree.

Black horses were a mostly very dark brown.

May I suggest undercoat in black then give the mini a brown wash watered down. Change the amount of brown you wash for each horse mini.

Grant

Very dark blue…such as midnight blue….or very dark purple. I find either works well.

Never use pure black for anything. It doesn't exist in nature. Lighten it with a little brown for horses.

I've been experimenting with Paynes Grey wash over white primer for my "black" horses and then darkening up the shadows with less diluted paint-it produces the sort of blue-grey highlights that some correspondents have suggested above. Worth a try.