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I'm working on bloodletters, and trying to do a wide variation in how each model looks individually. I'd like to do one model primarily white, and another black, with various colors on the raised bumps over their body. My first attempt with the white looks like I just primed it, then drybrushed over on the details I wanted red (at least so far). Any suggestions on how to make the model look bright white without looking like it was spray painted on? Same thing for the black as well.

For the white ones, start with a grey or black or blue undercoat and layer up to bright white.

For the black ones, try using varnish - this will increase the shiny-ness, so light does the highliting for you.

There's a topic on painting black a little way down the page. Haven't read the whole thing but I'm sure it's full of good advice.

two ways to really do white that i've found

1) base coat codex grey and work up to wolf grey and then finally white. It'll give you the most complex shadows but if you're doing a lot of these it'll take some time for them to look good.

2 prime it with matte white. Thin down some wolf grey and wash the whole thing, then thin down some codex grey and just hit the recesses it wont look as good but it'll be a decent table top quality

The dreadnote has a very good point for white, you should definitely do that.

What I'm doing for my Star Wars themed Clone trooper SM army (complete with colour denoted units) is primer white, then a thinned coat (or two, if required) of skull white over it.

It gives a nice clean, solid looking white and is definitely easier to do than what I was doing, which was black primer, shadow grey, space wolf grey, white.

I might add, that I don't go out of my way for painting comps. My models will usually have the three colours plus basing and look uniform. All I need.