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Hey guys, so I'm looking to really challenge myself as a painter so when I got my new White Scars, I thought I'd take a risk and try some new techniques. This is my first time painting white, as well as my first time using a divided paint scheme. It's technically based off of the Eagle Warriors, but I think I might try some basic color differences. Is there anything I'm doing ciritcally wrong or need to be doing to get more detail out of my models? Thanks for the critiques!

Don't paint white. Paint a really light grey, so you have room to highlight.

well, it looks like you're heading in the right direction, though that is a pretty scary paint scheme to jump into!

looking at the full-size pics, I notice a couple of things that could be improved, that would lift the quality a lot...

Firstly, the paint looks a bit thick, do you add water to your paint? I find thinning the paint down with a bit of water, and applying 2-6 thin coats of paint, giving it 15-30 minutes between coats for drying, results in a much smoother finished result then using the paint straight from the pot and smearing it on (and yeah, like SQRT said, instead of painting pure white, paint a very light grey, so you can use white to highlight it )

Secondly, your edge-highlighting is a little rough - this just takes practice really...though, again, thinning your paint down, and only having a minimal amount of it on your brush, will let you have much finer control over where it goes

...basically, thin your paints, and just keep practicing, there's not much more to it than that



^all that being said though, looking at the pics at default size in the post, so, probably a similar scale as seeing the model on the table in a game, it honestly looks pretty good!

Is it that many coats? I have been thinning down my paints quite a bit, but probably not enough if I need that many for even coverage. Good to know on the grey, and the edge highlighting I think has to do with my brushes, theyre getting old and I'm having a hard time getting light edges. Thanks for the tips I'll keep working!

SplinteredShield wrote:
Is it that many coats? I have been thinning down my paints quite a bit, but probably not enough if I need that many for even coverage. Good to know on the grey, and the edge highlighting I think has to do with my brushes, theyre getting old and I'm having a hard time getting light edges. Thanks for the tips I'll keep working!

really bright colours like white, yellow and red can be a real bear to work with...it can depend on exactly which paint you're using though, as they vary in "coverability"...but I find that painting white over a medium-grey primer often takes about 3-4 coats to get a reasonably uniform coat

...and yeah, a nice small, fine-tipped brush can help a lot with edge highlighting, practice is still probably more important though...takes a lot of time to train the tiny muscles in your hand to have fine enough control over the tip of a brush like that...I know I still have a long way to go myself with that kind of thing, but then, I mostly paint orks and nurgle stuff, so there's not really a lot of nice clean edges to highlight there

So I tried to work my way up with several grays until white, but other than a couple areas it definitely looks more muddy than shaded. Should I work with a light gray like Celestra and only edge highlight in white? Or should I do white then wash it then white again with grays as undertones?

SplinteredShield wrote:
So I tried to work my way up with several grays until white, but other than a couple areas it definitely looks more muddy than shaded. Should I work with a light gray like Celestra and only edge highlight in white? Or should I do white then wash it then white again with grays as undertones?

do you have "ulthuan grey"? sorry, that's the only citadel grey paint that I have at the moment, but that looks like it would work as "white", with actual white edge-highlighting...and looking at colour swatches, celestra looks like it might be a little too dark to properly pass as "white" on it' own

...if you only have celestra though, mixing a little white into it on the palette would probably do the job...say, 70% celestra, 30% white, roughly?...at a guess, that should about equal ulthuan.

Layer on thin coats of that with drying time inbetween, until you get a consistent colour, then edge-highlight with white.

...then for shading, I would suggest making a 50-50 mix of nuln oil and water, and apply liberally. Try to avoid letting it pool to much on any surfaces though, keep it moving with your brush and drag it around so it settles in the recesses - my reasoning for the 50-50 mix, is to make the nuln oil more subtle, so it doesn't stain the white as much as straight nuln oil would

...ehhh I don't know...that's probably how I would do it if I was trying to do clean-looking white, but really, I very rarely find myself painting white honestly, so you'd probably be better off checking out some white painting tutorials, or waiting for someone who's painted a lot of white to post here

eh, I did have a skim through this video, it's a marine, not a bike, but the painting result seems solid...