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Hi all,

I am painting my first models today and am gonna be painting the armour white. I see that most people use gradually lighter greys with a final coat of white. Why is this? Would it not look good if I just painted it white straight away?

Any help would be appreciated. I am planning on doing Celestra Grey > Administratum Grey > White Scar... Will this work well?

Cheers,

Millsy.

It's hard to get good coverage with light colors like white or yellow unless you paint them on top of a similar base color.

2 reasons off the top of my head.

1 is that direct white besides from a rattle can or airbrush takes many coats. vs a gradual shading up which may take 3-5 coats

2 is that it also allows you to shade as it goes for a nicer blend.

I'm thinking you will need to thin the paint a lot if you're going with lots of layers of pure white.

Personally, I've moved away from painting pure white on anything except for the highest of highlights. It's possible to paint with grays of various colors and still have the color read as "white" and it has a lot more color depth than if you tried to use white as the main color.

Just take a close look at anything that is "white" in your opinion. How much of that thing is actually pure white?

LordMillsy wrote:
Hi all,

I am painting my first models today and am gonna be painting the armour white. I see that most people use gradually lighter greys with a final coat of white. Why is this? Would it not look good if I just painted it white straight away?

Any help would be appreciated. I am planning on doing Celestra Grey > Administratum Grey > White Scar... Will this work well?

That plan should work, just make sure you do them in thin coats (perhaps 2 coats of each).

One of the biggest reasons to not paint pure white right off the get-go is that, in reality, it will not look right.

1 - When you do straight white, especially brush on, the model *tends* to end up taking a dozen (give or take) coats to get half-decent coverage, and by that time it ends up looking chalky and or too thick.
2 - Doing a darker (but similar) undercoat will allow easier shading
3 - At 28mm scale pure white with nothing else underneath just looks strange (imo) - You're best to leave pure white for edge highlights only and go with a slightly tinted white (extremely light gray) as your "main" colour.

Agreed with dullspork- I'd highlight to a very light grey, then do edges in white.

I've seen some good effect with people doing blue as an undertone to the white. I've done it in the past but didn't have the blending skills to pull it off as well as some. Prime white, wash in a light blue paint instead of ink/wash/glaze, build up and leave the pure white for highlights as others have mentioned. I've also seen white done as a shade up from a bone color or even a brown. Takes a pretty subtle hand, in my opinion, more so than the blue, but both are kind of tough. I guess it depends on if you are going for cool or warm for either of those schemes. *shrug*

What they said....when I paint "White" it's usually a 1:1 rakarth flesh:space wolves grey and even then I wash it with devlan.