Thinking About Black Armor

As I inch closer to completion of my Ultramarines Command Squad, I'm turning my mind towards a plan for painting Raven Guard.

I have been thinking about the paints I'll use for their black armor. There are a lot of tutorials and how-to's online about how to paint black, each uses a different variation on the theme. Some rely purely on a black paint with grey or blue highlights. Some use grey shaded with black, and some even attempt an NMM (non-metallic metals for those who don't know) effect.

I've only painted black armor twice before, both times for Ultramarines Chaplains. For those models, I used a deep, dark grey from Reaper call "Grey Liner." Basically, it's a paint designed for darklining fantasy miniatures. Darklining is where you paint a thin line of a darker shade between two separate pieces of a model, like a flesh-colored arm and a tunic sleeve, or an armor plate and a leather strap or belt. I think this is an outdated technique that most folks don't use anymore, having been supplanted by washes, but I could be wrong.

Anyhow, this paint is a very dark grey. For my Chaplains, I primed black, applied Grey Liner to all the armor, and then edge highlighted with lighter greys. Here is what it looked like on my counts-as Chaplain Cassius (try to ignore the horrible posing of the model):
Here's another shot with less colors, so you can compare it to the basic black of primer:

One thing to note is that I painted this Chaplain back before I started using Badab Black as a wash. In those times, I used thinned black paint to wash my metals and such. I can't remember if I added a black wash to his armor, but I doubt it.

I think this paint scheme will work for Raven Guard. However, my Raven Guard will be very plain in the armor department. I'm planning to select a lot of models and parts that don't have a ton of dangly decorations and fancy parts. I just don't see Raven Guard, the sneakiest of sneaky, carrying around all that junk on their armor. The clink of a decorative chain can give you away, and too much carved decoration on armor makes it harder to slip through small areas. The issue facing plainer armor using my Grey Liner method is that the models might be too plain on the table, looking like unpainted, primer-only models. My hope is that the edge highlights, small metal or colored details, and deeper black of a Badab Black/Nuln Oil wash in the recesses will help them stand out enough to look properly painted.

One additional idea I'm thinking about is switching over to GW paints for Raven Guard. The only problem is, I have no idea if they have an appropriately dark grey to replace the Grey Liner. I know I'll be using Leadbelcher and Ironbreaker for metal parts, plus Nuln Oil as a wash. While I do want the models to be muted and dark, I don't want them to be boring. The solution to boring black armored models is to add small splashes of color here and there. Grenades, pouches, and especially bolter casings. The bolter casings for my Ultramarines are black. Black casings over black armor will be too monochrome, so I'm thinking of using a very dark tone washed with Nuln Oil for the casings instead. I had my eye on Incubi Darkness for a greenish blue undertone, but I have no idea what the paint looks like in person. The other option is Caliban Green. Does anyone use these colors and able to tell me how they'd look slathered in Nuln Oil?


  1. The darkest Citadel greys will not be able to match the darkness of your Grey Liner. The only similar alternatives I can think of are extremely dark greys such as those you can find in the Vallejo Model Color line. The closest GW alternative would be Stormvermin Fur or I think Skavenblight Dinge which may be even darker, followed by one or more black washes.

    The colors you mentioned could possibly be converted into a near-black, but it would take easily 3 or more washes. I think choosing a non-grey and using this method does have potential, because you can modulate the subtle tinge of the grey/black you end up with, and choose whether you want your force to be a warm or cool black.

    I noticed a lot of FW and HH Raven Guard aren't big into traditional metal decorations, but things like ropes, tassels, sculpted wreaths, and especially tribal bird skulls are popular items. Pre-Heresy, they tended to stick with inscribed tattoos and other armor etchings, although one RG captain in a Black Library short story had the names of every previous captain who wore his armor etched onto its surface, so his entire armor was covered in names while his chaplain had a giant roc's skull for a helmet and the roc skeleton draped over his jump pack.

    Plain Raven Guard definitely feels the most "right" to me, and you can easily spruce up the plain black panels by select placement of white, whether on the pauldrons, the arms for the veterans (always found the white sleeves to look really cool and pop a lot), or painting only the cone mouthpiece of the beaky helmet white. You can also do different sporty stripes on their helmets, like the single wide vertical stripe, or two thin vertical stripes. Those look really good, I think.

    Honestly I think the best parts of your chaplain are the plain black areas, don't much like the bones on that sculpt, so I think your highlighting chops are definitely up for the job with the Raven Guard.

    1. That's good info on the paint, thanks!
      I'm really torn on the FW Raven Guard kits. While I like that they're special, they seem overly ornate. That BL Captain is Captain Aramis Koryn. I've got three of the audio dramas he's featured in. I do like the etched armor idea, but am not sure I could pull it off with a brush.
      I like those sergeant/veteran ideas. Smaller sections of white would work nicely.
      I agree on the Chaplain. I loved the sculpt while I was working on it, but fell out of love over the years. As you said, too many bones. He'll someday be replaced with the multipart plastic version from the Reclusiam box or by a kitbash.

      One thing I am looking at trying to do is sculpt the Raven Guard korvaya (no idea how that's spelled). The small bird skulls they carry on their belts as honor tokens and totems. They feature prominently in Helion Rain and somewhat in Labyrinth of Sorrow.