Painting Easy, Good Looking Black

This is Scout Sergeant Asad of the Raven Guard.  When I played a lot more 40K, this was the one guy who would always perform crazy feets of dicemanship.  He killed Abaddon once, stabbed a Hive Tyrant to death, and in one game alone killed two squads of three Obliterators after the rest of his squad was wiped out, and then blew up a Chaos Land Raider for good measure.  He's blindfolded in order to give the enemy a chance.

Anyway...

When I was first painting, painting a decent black was something that was a real challenge, and it was one of the first challenges that I wanted to work on as a painter.  I like to paint efficiently and actually finish painted armies to play the game with,  so this isn't an eighteen step method for 'Eavy Metal, but it works really nicely for me.  So, here are the steps:

1.  Prime Black.
2.  Base Coat with Charadon Granite.
3.  Generally highlight with Adeptus Battlegrey.
4.  Extreme highlight with Astronomicon Grey.
5.  Wash with Badab Black to mute the higher greys. 
6.  Pick out the details!

You can get a nice looking batch of models done this way, and do so in good time.  It's a simple technique, but it will get your plastic and primed models painted for the table, and that means that like Sergeant Asad, they'll perform a heck of a lot better!