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I'm finally getting around to painting my Chaos Marines and I'm planning on doing the Malice Color Scheme of Black/White quartering, but I can't think of what color to base them in. They will be mostly black so I'm thinking of a black base coat, but I'm worried it'll dull the white out too much.

For reference their right leg, left half of the torso, right shoulder pad, and half the helmet will be white the rest will be black with some green trim.

I'm not exactly a skilled painter so what say you dakka?

Man quartering is going to be fun

But as a general rule of thumb Dark over light is easier to paint, while light over dark takes many many many many more layers.

I would say prime white.

Do you have an airbrush? Would be pretty simple to spray white, mask off and spray black, which would also get you nice crisp lines. Lacking that, as Desubot said, it's much easier to paint black over white than white over black, so you'd want to prime white if you were brushing it on.

Prime white.
Painting black on white basecoat is easy. It's definitely much easier than the opposite.

I'd prime black.
Just keep your 'white' layers nice and thin.
I actually rate GW's basecoat/foundation paints.

Neither; grey is the answer, Allows you to shade down to black and highlight upto white.

I'd prime them black, you'll probably be layering your paint fro mdarker to lighter anyway right? I just can't see Chaos and being bright and shiny such as priming white can be. But really everyone here is right about easier to paint dark over light etc, it's just a personal preference on technique right?
Please post up progress pictures as you go and let us know which primer you went with etc.

Good luck.

I prime all my models black then dust them white dependent on the colour set/theme. Two or more puffs of white from above and one or more from the front at 45 degrees. if its a light colour set then light puffs of white from 45 degrees on all sides to generaly lighthen the model plus the extra from on top. this gives a natural hight light/shadow to your base colours and imo just fasilitates quick painting. My misses always has issue with where a light source would strike a surface so if you have a prefered lighting angle (mine is just above/slight to the front) you can dust in the white from that direction to 'light' model and guide your painting.

So in other words prime them with both!

 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:
I prime all my models black then dust them white dependent on the colour set/theme. Two or more puffs of white from above and one or more from the front at 45 degrees. if its a light colour set then light puffs of white from 45 degrees on all sides to generaly lighthen the model plus the extra from on top. this gives a natural hight light/shadow to your base colours and imo just fasilitates quick painting. My misses always has issue with where a light source would strike a surface so if you have a prefered lighting angle (mine is just above/slight to the front) you can dust in the white from that direction to 'light' model and guide your painting.

So in other words prime them with both!

Nice! Learn something everytime I read a thread!

I would prime it grey, just so I already have pre-shadows for the white part. Then I'll darken the black parts and build it up to dark grey.