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here is the plan.

i bought a land raider for my ultramarine. i bought the forge-world doors and decals to badge the hell out of it. i have an airbrush, and the will to use it. i have lots of paint, and a fairly unique idea for my land-raider.

i am going to reverse the color scheme. How the feth do you paint a white tank? what is the airbrush technique. what colors do i start and build with? do i color modulate for effect on it, or do i just move on and not do that at all? what is a great base for white that i can shoot through my air gun? how do you build up white with an airbrush.

in short. i hate painting white, but i really like my idea of a color scheme. i want the body of the tank to be white, with the sponsons, doors, hatches, and engine covers to be blue. what technique am i hunting for? any help is greatly appreciated.

Some would say just prime it white, though in my opinion you'd probably be after a grey you can build a solid colour off whist not making every other colour on the model too bright.

Have you thought about doing codex grey main with blue accents like in the codex?

i am unsure, should i start with codex grey? maybe build up to a super-light grey and leave white as the highlight color? would it look "white enough" at that point? also, when do i ink it? how do i wash it? wouldnt the progressive layers of color modulation eliminate the ink wash i throw on to the model?


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Why not "Marble" it?

Whites kind of a bitch to paint if you insist on doing it base shadow grey, midtone fenris grey or a mix of shadow and skull white. Color modulation is not my forte, no help there. Watering down asurman blue works as a wash. demonstration:

I agree with shasolenzabi.
Make the tank white marble.

Here is a thread I found: Right Here! Click it!

The technique you're looking for is called preshading, and it's generally done on aircraft.

White or light grey primer, then with a dark colour - you use a fine airbrush line to do your panel lines AND SHARP EDGES. Dark greys or browns will work well, and give you varying different tones. I'd stick with a grey for UM's.

It will feel wrong to be shading edges down like that, but you want the white to go down to grey by the edge and then you'll pick that edge out later to make it pop. It will be a lot more subtle than you will first think.

Then the boring bit; many, many layers of extremely thin white to bring the colour back up and smooth in the preshading. Thinner is better here, and 20 coats is going to be better and smoother than 2. Far easier and more reliable to be working with layers that you can barely see.

I'd work up to white all over before doing any stripes / recognition marks in blue. Use a translucent dark blue and you can ride on the top of the previous layer for the highlight / shade. (Colour modulation).

Airbrush coats need to go on moist, not wet. The paint that hits should appear glossy, and then go matt after a few seconds (2-5). Flow control is important, so make sure your tip stays clean, you don't want spatter.

Finally, once this is all done, a gentle drybrush of pure white to bring up the edges on the white, and probably SW grey / UM blue mix for the blue. Be careful doing the blue, keep the drybrush toward the middle of the markings. Not hitting all the edge looks better than accidentally hitting the white.

Edit:

You asked about washes; best trick is oil washing over preshade jobs. GLOSS the vehicle with Future / Klear (something non-oil based!). Let it dry. Thin down oil paint to the consistency of dirty water with low odour thinners. With a fine brush introduce the mix to a panel line by 'dotting' - you'll notice it gets sucked along like a ferret in a drainpipe. Don't worry about the excess around the dot. Carry on dotting in your panel lines, deep recesses etc. Let the oils dry for 2 or 3 hours (including the dots). Moisten a q-tip in thinner, and gently wipe away the dots and any other excess oils. Keep rotating the q-tip, and keep using a clean one. Nice sharp panel lines are the result. Paynes grey is probably the best colour for the job here. Do the wash after the panel lining, and after decalling if you're doing so - so there's TWO coats of gloss before the oil (one under the decals, one over them to seal them in. Make sure each stage is thoroughly dry (24 hours minimum).

Have you thought about pre-shading? Prime the whole tank grey, then add shadows and highlights with your airbrush. Black in the shadwos, white on all the high surfaces.

When you've done this, apply a fine white coat with your airbrush over the work you've done already. This will create soft and pronounced highlights and shadows for a white tank.

I've tried it on my Warjack with Hawk Turquoise instead of white, but I should also work with other colours. The black should become dark grey, the grey a white that is a tad dark and the white areas should get a nice bright white highlight. http://ik-painter.blogspot.com/2011/09/from-zero-to-hero-v-charger-cygnar.html

Cheers,


IK-Painter