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What is an easy, almost speed painting type way to easily shade white or black? Can I just use a black wash on white? Should I start with a very light grey instead and then wash, then maybe quickly drybrush white?

As for black, can I start with a very dark grey, then just use a black wash to make the recesses even darker?

For white, start with light grey and highlight up to white. Codex Grey -> Fortress Grey -> White works.

For black, start with dark grey, glaze / shade down to black, then edge highlight with a medium/light grey. 75-25 black/codex grey, thin black, codex grey works.

Thanks winterdyne, but where do the washes come into play? I need washes to help cover up my crappy paint job!

If you want to use a wash do it right before you highlight.

Generally white and black don't do well with washes, it's better to work clean.

Well, a blue works with washes for white, never washed black

You can use washes if and only if you want a really muddy or dirty white AND really stark shadows. And even if that's your purpose you can achieve it in other ways. For example on the cloak of this model:



The process:

1) Prime Black (yes, I primed this black. I'm stupid.). Basecoat Scorched Brown.
2) Layer Bestial Brown
3) Layer Snakebite Leather
4) Blend Dwarf Flesh and Elf Flesh on the Snakebite Leather. At this stage I can't really say the ratio of the mixture because I constantly change it depending on the part of the model.
5) Highlight Bleached Bone
6) Highlight Skull White
7) Wash everything with.... washes. I glazed the flat parts with Gryphonne Sepia and the shadow parts with Devlan Mud.
8) Re-hilight both Bleached Bone and Skull White
9) Ponder on the fact that you're painting a white and red model, so why hell did you have to prime black.

You can wash black till the cows come home and see very little difference, for bloody obvious reasons. Using a dark grey and washing down to black is a good way of doing it simply. Charadon Granite is even mixed up for you, if you don't mind a strange warm green/brown grey.

As for white, you can wash to get the shadows, say base with Astronomicon Grey for a cool white, or Dheneb Stone for a warm white. Then wash with Asurmen Blue for cool, Gryphonne Sepia for warm (you can also use Devlan Mud or Badab Black, but these are much starker). Then you have to re-paint the base colour onto the main sections, then highlight up to white. You could try drybrushing but on most models that will look awful.

Here's some tutorials:-

Painting White
Painting Black

These are a bit more "painterly" however than speed-painting, but they go over the theory of how white and black work, shadow and highlight wise and can help you understand how and where to place your shadows.