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Just starting out and have a question about painting white.

I’m painting high elves and have a green and white scheme.

The sleeves have creases on them and I’ve based it white washed it with Agrax Earthshade then went over it again with white.

It just looks really dirty now.

Where am I going wrong?? How would you go about getting a crisp white but with shading??

Any help would be really appreciated!!

Cheers

Agrax Earthshade is made for making paint seem dirty.

Instead of using washes, highlight instead.

Well earthshade is a muddy color, so it will leave things looking dirty

Try adding some blue-grey or bone in with your white for shading, and highlight up to the pure white.

Earth.... Dirt.... Ha yeah makes sense!! Should have realised!!

Cheers for the advice.

Another idea:

Thin the wash. Really thin the wash. That way, when you wash the white, it's only a faint color that's left behind when it dries, and you can highlight back up to pure white after that.

Blue is the key to shading a clean white... on my Tallarn's headdresses I use a thin wash of asurmen blue over a white basecoat, then layer on white. Blending is easily achived by adding in some of the wash when thinning the white paint for the layers. The blue helps make the cloth look soft and clean.

Not sure if the new blue wash is a bit too dark for this (I've yet to try it), but its worth a try!

Arclaw wrote:Blue is the key to shading a clean white... on my Tallarn's headdresses I use a thin wash of asurmen blue over a white basecoat, then layer on white. Blending is easily achived by adding in some of the wash when thinning the white paint for the layers. The blue helps make the cloth look soft and clean.

Not sure if the new blue wash is a bit too dark for this (I've yet to try it), but its worth a try!

adding a bit of space wolf gray or ice blue would work well for a clean cloth look.

Not sure how many people do this, but my technique for painting clean white is to thin the white to a wash consistency and then layer it on over a gray primer, adding in the above colors at the start with a thicker wash, then thinning it out up to pure white

You need lots and lots of layers. You should slowly build it up from a grey undercoat in thin layers. Each successive layer getting 'whiter'. You can wash with the recesses with anything really. Heres a shot of my astropath after about six coats of a white/grey mix. The first coat I actually shaded with a black green. Once the white picked up a bit I moved to a light grey shade. Still a few more coats to go. Just be patient.

I prefer Barksdale's method of layering up to white. If you do just use a wash, try to be neat about it and stay just in the creases as opposed to flooding the entire area.

I have long used layering with a final glaze for clothing.

I start with a craft paint called "Amish Grey" as a basecoat. GW Fortress Grey is pretty close, if a bit darker.

A layer of craft paint "Eggshell White" comes next, followed by a final highlight of pure white.

Then a final glaze of the old GW Black Ink thinned down aroung 50/1. It barely even shows up, but it helps the top highlights not shine so brightly (since it's cloth, not metal) and deepens the shadows nicely.