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Hi all,

I've just started a 40k Space Marine chapter of my own design and I want them to conform to codex colour schemes. This means that I've painted my terminators helmets white. I've never had any experience in painting detailed areas in white and I was wondering what the best way to pick the detail out is? Is using black ink after painting the area in white OK or should I try to paint carefully over the black undercoat to leave shadow in the right areas?

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

I used a very light badab black wash and it turned out ok... just be sure to go back and highlight with a clean white afterwards and you won't have any problem.

Great stuff, I'll give that a go!

Thanks.

Well, this will result in a more yellow-ish boney colour, but painting it with bleached bone, giving it several washes of watered down bronzed flesh and then drybrushing it with bleached bonecan create the look of weathered old armour that used to be white.
I'll be posting some pics in my gallery soon of termies and other marines(and a dread) that have been painted in this way soon.

For skull white, try a light grey wash to add depth with a darker grey wash in recesses. You can also employ blacklining to produce a more pronounced effect.

I base coated the helmets white, and used black/brown mix to ink the detail in. After that I went over all the flat areas with white again. Putting detail into white models and making it look clean is tough, so good luck .

Ive painted badab black with a very fine brush along detail lines on my white and it looks good. as FP says, you just need to go back with white and clear up.

Thanks for all your posts everyone, good ideas to digest there. I'll post some pics of WIP while I'm doing them. If it goes well I might also do some step-by-step images for the tutorial forum. That's if it goes well!

I know its probably a little late, but I used a light wash of asurmen blue, then, before it dried, mixed in grey and ultra marines. This creates a nice blue grey mix on the model. I then take the white again, and mix on the highlights. its the only blending technique I know, and it works if you can move quickly. I also use it on my dire avengers.

I agree if I was doing this I'd use blue in the details. I just depends on if you want the helms to have a cool base (blues, greens) or a warm base (browns, reds orange) and picking the right one that will compliment the overall scheme is up to you.

I've finally got round to finishing my first termie off and I used a black wash to pick out the detail on the face. I was also really pleased with the way the crux terminatus came out on this one. Still need to do some highlights on the armour but I'll get round to that at some point soon. Thanks for everyone's advice on this, it was extremely helpful in getting a good finish on the model.

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Seriously though, nice paint job. I think you need to add a little more Skull White or Boltgun Metal to break up the brown a wee bit more in the larger areas, but otherwise it looks pretty clutch.

I think he looks great so far!

Then again, I'm kinda biased, having done almost all my IG tanks in a similar brown Have you given any thought to doing battle damage on him yet? He looks extremely clean and spiffy.

I agree the scheme is really good

A very solid color scheme! I think you did great for your first SM chapter. I'll look forward to seeing more from you!