I like to paint the highlights for black also in a light grey and then tone it down with a black wash.

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My armies:
Imperial Guard: 5000+P
Necrons: 3000P
Space Marines: 3000P (WIP)
Tau: sometime eventually

I'm feeling like I don't know the first thing about painting now...(well, I've managed to play miniature games for15 years, without really bothering to get good about painting, so I can only blame myself.

Tried adding some more grey highlights:


Right now I feel as if I'm struggling to even find the right place to highlight the thing. Where should I apply them?

Tried sharp white hightlights and blue highlights, didn't think they worked out that well.

Not that mine are much better, but since you are using the same model I did for the monoliths, here's how I ended up highlighting them:

http://www.twolandscreative.com/wip/epi ... iths02.jpg

You should be able to see the image by clicking the link, I didn't want to hijack your thread using the img tag.

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-Vaaish

Hey thanks, that helped! Tried googling for pics, but could only find one (and they were grey, so didn't have the same highlightning).

Trick looks to be to only paint halfway down on the vertical inner edges, I'll try that!

black is really hard to paint as a solid colour as it's hard to use washes and the like, so what I do is start with a 'not-quite-black' base (between very dark gray and black), do a couple of highlights then a straight black wash. Otherwise you can spend forever blending up multiple levels of highlights..

Yeah, black takes some work to be good. I ended up just copying Vaaish highlighting pattern (with the same black and grey). Looks all right on the table, but having black as the base colour does mean that the grooves are almost invisible.

+ you can do the loveliest subtle black highlights but when you take a photo, the bloody thing just looks black!