Grim Angus - Trollblood

My first attempt at painting a Troll from the Privateer Press range. A really nice model, lots of well defined details without being over the top.

How to Paint Black NMM

So this is something I've been using on pretty much everything I've painted in the past few months, I really like the look and it's actually quite simple to do. Start off with a smooth basecoat of black.

Take a pale blue, I use Scale Color Bering Blue, but GW Fenrisian Blue is pretty much the same. Mix up two paint consistencies, one layer and one glaze. I use quite an organic process to build up the highlight, switching between the glazing and layering as and when needed, but in essence, you want to start with your layer paint and lightly sketch in where the highlight will be. So for example, on the gun barrel, I paint a thin line along the top edge, try and make it as straight as you can but it doesn't need to be perfect. Now take your glaze and glaze up to the line from bottom to top along the length of the barrel. Then glaze downwards, again towards the line. Do this in a few passes until the original line disappears and all you're left with is a blurred colour transition.

Now take a pure white and add a very sharp highlight where the blue is strongest. I put these along the length of the barrel, in a series of dots and dashes, forming a broken line of highlights. This gives a more realistic look than using a solid line, and it's also much easier to do. I then place white 'glint' highlights onto the uppermost pure black area, this is the same kind of idea as when you're painting a gem stone.

I'll do a separate post on how to highlight different kinds of surfaces, I'd say knowing where to put your highlights is the hard part of doing NMM and once you understand the why, the how becomes quite simple.