When it came to painting up my Batman miniature I needed some inspiration. The beauty is, there is no shortage of inspiration out there so the only difficulty is making a decision.
There are so many incarnations of Batman throughout his media-based life so far but today I'm looking at the more mainstream visuals – my painting style leans towards the dark side so my research focussed on a somewhat limited palette.
A more colourful image of Batman (like the one above) was the obvious place to start. This colour palette would be perfect for painting miniatures and creating impact on the tabletop. To me, however, it was a little bit too 'Ultramarines' and as such wasn't a contender for long.
This next image neutralises a lot of the bright colour of the first, whilst maintaining a good level of contrast between the blues and greys. I do like the blue tones but the grey is a little on the light side for me.
Here we have an almost monotone outfit – the blues replaced by black. As much as I like the idea of having more black, it just seems to have lost something. I do prefer this version of the yellow belt, not so bright with a richer yellow than the others.
The Dark Knight himself is the epitome of dark. With an all-black outfit he is definitely the coolest (looking not un-Vader-like) but this causes it own problems on the miniature table. It would make for a rather dull model I feel and black can be difficult to highlight/shade.
Given that the model I chose to paint it's not surprising that I went for Batman's Arkham colour scheme. The cape and cowl are more off an off-black shade of blue, supported by mid-grey for the bodysuit and touches of black here and there. The yellow belt is toned down too, ensuring it doesn't zing out at you against the desaturated colours around it.
The only question remaining is can I match this in my painting?