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Hey there Dakka,

I am on the verge of a mental breakdown. There are several painting frustrations I REALLY need help with. I've been in the hobby for ages now, but it's only recently that I've become more serious about painting. I've moved on to using a wet palette, which is immensely useful. But certain things still elude me:

1) WHITE. How the hell do you paint it to a smooth finish?! Is there some kind of secret that everyone else knows? Do I have to complete some kind of initiation to paint it properly?

2) Metallic paints always seem to be really thin, no so much silver, but bronze and gold. Any help here?

3) How do I achieve decent zenethial highlighting with a brush?

I think that's about it for now, but I imagine I'll be back with more before long.

Thanks guys

The only thing I can help with is the painting white.

But I find that base coating what your going to paint white with ice blue(GW) then building up the white from there makes exceptionally smooth good looking cool white. Make sure you thin both the blue undercoat and the white topcoat good enough. Then as a final touch I typically dry brush a little white to smooth out anything that looks "wonky". I find that base coating with the ice blue gets rid of the "chalky" look white can get.

The trick to painting white is to never paint anything white. You can use the method that Chancetragedy mentioned, or you can pick essentially any light color and work in brighter layers until you get what you want. Never start with white and reserve pure white for just the brightest of highlights. Edges, tips, etc.
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What do you mean that metallics are thin? Do you mean that you find that they don't cover well? For gold metallics, start with a brown base coat and paint your metallics over that. With silver, black, is a better base.

For your zenithal lighting, I imagine that you probably need to learn how to do proper layering.

 TheFatElf wrote:
Hey there Dakka,

I am on the verge of a mental breakdown. There are several painting frustrations I REALLY need help with. I've been in the hobby for ages now, but it's only recently that I've become more serious about painting. I've moved on to using a wet palette, which is immensely useful. But certain things still elude me:

1) WHITE. How the hell do you paint it to a smooth finish?! Is there some kind of secret that everyone else knows? Do I have to complete some kind of initiation to paint it properly?

Don't paint white! Sounds counterintuitive, but use a very light grey (or ivory colour for a warmer effect, and only use actual white for the top highlight.

2) Metallic paints always seem to be really thin, no so much silver, but bronze and gold. Any help here?

Use a normal, matching basecoat, so black or dark blue for silver, a warm brown for gold

3) How do I achieve decent zenethial highlighting with a brush?

Many, many hours of practice, honestly, if you're interested in the effect, just spring for a Chinese airbrush and compressor, they're more than good enough for this.

I think that's about it for now, but I imagine I'll be back with more before long.

Thanks guys

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2011/12/white-scars-and-how-to-paint-white.html

easiest time I ever had painting white. The ink he recommends is about 3 bucks a bottle, a bit more than what comes in a gw paint pot, and is easy to cover with just a layer of white.

Heres my recently done speeder, same technique.

 TheFatElf wrote:
1) WHITE. How the hell do you paint it to a smooth finish?! Is there some kind of secret that everyone else knows? Do I have to complete some kind of initiation to paint it properly?

Black and white are never completely black nor white. For white you can start with ice blue/ivory or any sligltly-more-than-offwhite and highlight to white or offwhite (or viceversa, start (off)white and build shadows to colour)

2) Metallic paints always seem to be really thin, no so much silver, but bronze and gold. Any help here?

Basecoating with a suitable colour makes metallics stand out, the same with a wash; also, building metallic highlight improves them; finally, to dartken/highlight metallics could be achieved also by mixing them with normal colours.

3) How do I achieve decent zenethial highlighting with a brush?

Decide or check the source of light with a lamp taking a pic when primed, then when you highlight you brush towards the light source point, when shadowing you brush away from it.

I hate white so can't help there.

Model air metalics cover very well and flow easily when applied with a brush. I get a lot of mileage out of "aluminium".

All very helpful, thanks very much guys! This is why I love Dakka

I have never really painted a model primarily white, but I've done a few helmets and shoulder pads.

I always found it very helpful to start off with fortress grey and then paint the white over that. That way the base colour or primer doesn't bleed through into the white.

Vallejo and GW both make some grey paints that are extremely light. So much so that they actually do look white. Ulthuan Grey is the GW one. Cold Grey might've been the Vallejo one. I find that they tend to go on quite a bit smoother than straight white, too.

 Dullspork wrote:

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What do you mean that metallics are thin? Do you mean that you find that they don't cover well? For gold metallics, start with a brown base coat and paint your metallics over that. With silver, black, is a better base.

I found grey a better base for silvers. Unless you want super high contrast then use black.