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My current method of painting white is to spray a GW white basecoat, wash it down with GW Nuln Oil, and then individually paint the paints white.
It looks alright, but leaves no room for highlights and takes FOREVER.
Here's the finished product:



Can I get some feedback on the miniature please?

That looks really good. What do you think is wrong with it?

And how would you highlight white anyway?

Dude, for tabletop , that is excellent. Dont put yourself down. Thats really good .

another way is to make the model more GRAY then starting to layer it with white to make the white stand out more, but i think your white scar angel looks good

I think everyone hates painting white... the mini doesn't look so bad, ESPECIALLY for white. My advice - get an airbrush. It makes everything easier, including painting those hard-to-paint colors like yellow, white, and red.

When painting white grays the way ^^

It looks good for a white model which is very hard to pull off.

I highly recommend every get themselves an airbrush. A cheap single action plastic external mix airbrush will do all the basic stuff and can be had for less than $10 using canned air when you factor in the minimal cost of setup and the vastly improved speed at which you can paint entire squads, and the quality of the paint especially on vehicles to me it's the only way to go.

Here's how I would do it. I would prime the model using Vellejo surface primer German Dark Yellow. This will add some warmth, and depth to the white.
Then I would basecoat the entire model in Vallejo cold Grey.
I would follow that by a 45 degree downward angle zenithial spray of 50/50 Cold Grey, and white.
Then a 80 degree downward angle zenithial spray of white.

I would then hit it with a blue oil wash. Why oil wash? Because after you wash it and get a nice blue shadow in the crevaces. You can take a 1-tip and mineral spirits and clean off the white parts.
Done carefully you can leave some blue hue in places, and create a nice white highlight. Without any additional painting.

So basically all your white is done with 3 airbrush coats, a oil wash, and then some q-tip work. All that is left then is to paint all the other details in.

This is a very similar technique to what I used to paint my Imperial Fists.

Never use pure white to paint white, unless you're doing the final highlight. It's the same thing with black, only i the case of black use it as the deepest shadow.

You can use cream colors, bluish grey colors or neutral grey colors as base for white, then layer it lighter and lighter, adding more white to the mix until you achieve pure white. You can also start with a grey basecoat (spraypaint it with a grey primer) and start highlighting right off the bat without using a wash, just leave the recesses grey.

Hope that helps. Whitish colors are the ones I often use in my miniatures, and I can understand your frustration.


As for the miniature, it looks good for tabletop quality. But there's room for improvement. My comment would be the white looks too flat. Maybe watching this video might help you:





If you want to paint fast, white is really not one of the colors I would recommend for speedpainting.

To paint white, you never start with pure white. You start with a light color, then highlight up to white.

For a warm white, you start with Bleached Bone as the base, then start mixing in white to highlight

For a cold white, you start with Space Wolves Grey and start mixing in white.

For a neutral(ish) white, you start with Codex Grey and start mixing in white.

Then a final glaze of VERY thin brown, blue, or black wash (on the order of 50/1 water to wash) to smooth the color gradients.

Use off whites and use pure white ONLY as a highlight.

 SonOfLoken wrote:
My current method of painting white is to spray a GW white basecoat, wash it down with GW Nuln Oil, and then individually paint the paints white.
It looks alright, but leaves no room for highlights and takes FOREVER.
Here's the finished product:



Can I get some feedback on the miniature please?

From mpov, this model looks really nice nonetheless.
Right now you have a closeup picture with lights directly on the model which, unless you are a top of the line painter, do not make justice of the models. Imagine whole squads painted like this on the table seen from 2 to 3 feet away. It would be awsome!

yeah, that guy does look great

what I would do
-prime in white or a light grey
-wash down
-airbrush from above with a white, lightly
-highlight

it should save you some time re-basecoating the model like you are doing, but I think you will lose some of the really nice outlining in the gaps you are managing.