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I am the prettiest princess, and thus I want to paint the sparkliest white tank.
Does anyone have tips for painting clean white and defined vehicles with large flat panels?
How does edge highlighting work in such cases?

I know most folks love dirty worn tanks, so when I followed a guide for painting them and substituted white for the colour used, I guess it shouldn't be surprised it didn't work well, it just looked dirty.

I have access to an airbrush and tickly brushes, but I'm lost on where to start, what colour to prime, whether to shade before or after.
The outer pattern is going to be metallic blues, which I assume I'd do after.

What colour white?

You could basecoat in a super light blue (like Fenrisian Grey, or teclis blue + white (1:1)) then gradient up to pure white.

^ the above is purely theoretical, kinda interested to see how it would go though

The kind of white that goes well with rhinestones...
...I stripped the sparkle tank.

I'd prefer to use the airbrush, thinking about it.

I'm rather certain you have no choice but to use the airbrush.

Blue would probably be best, i could test it on trevor i suppose

I have some Metallicus mechanicum units that I am in the middle of painting, that go alongside my Tech Priest Dominus that I painted a while back.

I am pretty sure I started with a base colour using VMA Pale Grey Blue (71.046) and then went up to white from there with successive blends.

I'll double check the paint when I get home, I definitely still have it and have been using it on a Valkyrie recently.

Cheers guys. I'm hoping I can get this right, it's been a pretty crappy week, and painting is supposed to be my relaxation.

If I wanted hard lines in the panels, would I prime/base in black-grey and airbrush at an angle/mask? Or line in after the but but before the white blends?

And kb if you paint Trev like a Christmas tree, I'm going to be amused but unsurprised.

Even with something that is meant to be pure white you still don't want to paint it with pure white. Your brain is used to processing very light gray/blue/whatever as "pure white" because objects are almost always in at least some amount of shadow that darkens the color outside of the brightest highlights. And, like many things about painting scale models, you need to exaggerate this effect for it to be processed correctly. If you paint the whole tank pure white it will look flat and unnatural because a real object is never that bright. Instead you want to use a somewhat darker shade for the shadowed areas, up to near-white on brighter surfaces, and save the actual pure white paint for the very brightest highlights.

With it being effectively a box, other than the underneath, I'm struggling on what the shaded areas would be.
I've painted white figures before, but never flats. :(

Absolutely don't go all the way to medium grey, but it really depends on how you normally style your shadows - nothing changes in the style, just the palette.

Show us a rhino you have done that isn't disco

What vehicle is it specifically? I'd start by knowing what vehicle you intend to do so you can plan out your shades better.

One tactic if you want a very pure white (which sometimes you do, I know everyone says you *never* want pure white, I think sometimes it can look good) is simply to prime grey, preshade areas with a dark grey or grey-blue and then take your airbrush and slowly build up your white until you are happy with the effect.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
With it being effectively a box, other than the underneath, I'm struggling on what the shaded areas would be.
I've painted white figures before, but never flats. :(

Corners around armor plates, etc. You're still going to have shadows even on fairly flat surfaces, and I can't think of a single tank model that is so flat and boxy that it wouldn't have any shading at all.

It's this tank. Except now it's plastic again because I started to hand brush the panels and my white layer paint pot is curdled like cream cheese.
Not a great visual, I was pretty pissed when I found out after two panels.

kb_lock wrote:
Show us a rhino you have done that isn't disco

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
It's this tank. Except now it's plastic again because I started to hand brush the panels and my white layer paint pot is curdled like cream cheese.
Not a great visual, I was pretty pissed when I found out after two panels.

Yeah, that tank has tons of areas that would be in shadow. Everywhere there's a recessed corner, underneath the turret, etc. Remember, we're not talking about black shadows here, just subtle variation between off-white and slightly darker off-white.

I think the best thing would probably use pure white and light grey and do "colour modulation"....

http://rustandthecity.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/tutorial-dunkelgelb-colour-modulation.html
http://migjimenez.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/modulation-and-weathering.html

The downside to colour modulation is you do usually need to do a bit of masking, but it tends to give you a bit of contrast and makes the panels stand out more without making it look dirty.

In that first link, "Panel Lighting" is often the way I end up doing it, but I think when it comes to white that can just make the panel look a bit dirty around the edges.

"Zenithal" could also work, but the contrast isn't as stark with Zenithal so you end up having to go darker on your greys.

Then you can finish it off with a light grey pin wash in the crevices and corners. But only use something ever so slightly darker than the darkest colour you used for the modulation to avoid making it look like there's grime build up in the crevices.

I really do not like that effect, but it could be the way he's presented it. To me a successful airbrush result should not scream "airbrush", and that really seems to.
We shall see. Got 90% of the paint off, just cleaning the treads.

I can understand the idea that it looks too "airbrushed", but keep in mind those vehicles have exaggerated the effect (because they're doing a heavily contrasting camo pattern, the modulation needs to be more contrasting to avoid being completely lost, I learned that because on one of my vehicles I spent ages doing really nice subtle modulation that looked great when the vehicle was sand coloured, but then I painted the green for the camo and you couldn't even tell that the sand had modulation at all ). I'd suggest doing it much more subtly than those links, and then the pin wash at the end will further dull down the modulation effect.

If you don't like the effect at all, I'd consider painting each panel individually using subtly different greys, so then you have to pick a fake light source and figure out which panels are going to be brighter and darker.

The challenge if painting a good clean white is that most the techniques we use to exaggerate detail in miniature painting make things look either a bit dirty or weirdly cartoony. Making it look realistic is hard.

EDIT: Another style that I've seen used on Gundams is to just spray it white and then use a light grey pin wash like Tamiya's

http://www.tamiya.com/english/products/87131_133panel_accent/index.htm

You can mix your own of course. You could also take it a step further and paint the model off white, doing the light grey panel wash and then edge highlight it pure white.

Man, you can get away with some panel lighting, the effect will look cool.
So, here's my recipe for panel lighting, no masking required!
Step 1: Prime tank in black
Step 2: Loosely airbrush grey (something like fortress grey) on the panels, focussing mainly on the center of the panels. By panels I mean large flat areas.
Step 3: Lightly airbrush pure white on the center of the panels, like in the previous step. This time focus more in the center and distribute as you see fit, until you get the type of white you want (closer to pure white or to fortress grey). If you're going to dilute the white, make sure you adjust the pressure and spraying distance to avoid it being too runny, test on paper as needed.
Step 4: Apply gloss varnish to seal the surface and apply a very soft pin-wash with black oil paint to the recessed panel lines and around rivets / details.
Step 5: Go play some fallout 4 for about 2-3 hours
Step 6: Come back from playing and, using a cotton swab, dip it with A LITTLE white spirit and remove excess wash.
Step 7: Bask in the glory of the emperor's leman russ for a few more hours
Step 8: Seal the tank with some matte varnish and call it a day

@BC - try game air wolf grey as a base it's a nice, off-white slightly blue.

Incidentally, sparkly (human) tanks are not easy to pull off. Because they have a lot of flat panels, they end up looking flat and plastic. If you really want it to sparkle, you need to apply NMM and essentially turn it into white chrome -- like the way a Ferrari looks under showroom lights. Basically, you must paint the sparkle.

See how these look?

http://gmauthority.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2014-Chevrolet-Corvette-Stingray-Arctic-White.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8504/8382507360_27492de219_z.jpg

Eep, so many ideas to think about. Thanks so much for all the input. I guess the fest step is priming after I finish cleaning. Got a grey and a black, thankfully.

I'd not heard of the specific Tamiya pin was before, I usually just do it using a thin brush, I'll have a look into it!

For today I'm just drying it out. Lot of water still leaking from the tank.

The Tamiya stuff is basically like an oil wash or enamel wash. You apply it to a crevice with a fine brush and it'll pull itself through to bring out the panel lines and you can clean it up after you've applied it.

It's just specially formulated to work well out of the bottle to save you having to thin it yourself. AK interactive also make enamel washes and Testors has some as well now I believe.

I only mention the Tamiya stuff specifically because I actually own it myself and they make a light grey version which is pretty much designed for white vehicles (I reckon it was made for Gundams originally).

I'm not sure I agree with Talys on the idea of painting it like NMM, that's more if you want it to look super glossy like it has a layer of clear over it and the principle could be applied to any colour (which I guess you might want to do as well, but I think it'll look weird, especially if you don't paint the non-white parts in the same fashion).

I did say sparkly. I guess I hadn't thought about NMM level sparkly. If I had time, I'd go for it. Might do for the matching plasma Baneblade which has no deadline.

You could just use a pearl/metallic white colour as well I guess.

I guess when you say "sparkly", what do you mean exactly? Can you give a real world example?

Just the opposite of muddy. Off the production line.

I was gonna replace all the rivets with blue rhinestones, but I only have 4 weeks.

But you mean something like a white car, yeah? Because a white tank even off the production line isn't going to look bright and glossy like a car does.

If you want super glossy, you could have a crack at polishing the paint (so rather than trying to emulate a shiny white with painting techniques, actually reproduce a shiny white with sanding and polishing).

That's how model makers emulating cars do it. If you want a really shiny finish it's important each layer of paint is very smooth and then final layer is polished to a shine. Use sandable paints, airbrush them (which will tend to produce a bit of a grain) then sand with something like 1200 followed by 2000 grit and then polish it up (a dremel can speed up the polishing process of you're lazy like me!).

I myself have never used that technique to create car-like finishes, but I have seen others do it and I have been using a similar technique to create a super smooth finish for natural metal finishes on aircraft models.

Oh, no, I meant plain old clean, like people talk about sparkly clean sheets or laundry.

Actual gloss would look a bit odd. I can try if there's time to. Might go well with the candy paint I have planned on the 'blade.

Did I just read somewhere that you had defiled decorated a tank with rhinestones?

Not yet, but I'm going to. And a plasma Baneblade.
That one will have a clear cast turret and LEDs though, so it's on a waiting list.

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Not yet, but I'm going to. And a plasma Baneblade.
That one will have a clear cast turret and LEDs though, so it's on a waiting list.

You mean a stormblade?

That's the one. I'm dyslexic and with there being about ten of the things, I don't even try to name them. I also figure most non iG players will know "[x] weapon tank" better than the formal name.

Hi, I'm BC. I put pants on Slaanesh daemons and add flamboyancy where it's absolutely not required.