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for some reason this color is giving me endless amounts of grief…

i'm not a master-painter by any means, and i think i have figured out how to paint white cloth… but my paints keep coming out very chalky, and when i do thin them out, they just don't look right. i am using GW paints.

currently trying to paint white space marine armor. any tips?


edit:
i'll elaborate a bit.

i'm going for an effect like this picture of minas morgul:
http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=2178

Don't paint white. Paint light grey with the brightest highlights coming out to be white.

the P3 Frostbite works well as a base for whites and light greys in my experince

try using light beige color (bleached bone) as your base, black wash for shadows and then start adding white to the beige for gradually highlighting until you reach pure white for the more highlighted parts.

Use this:

You have to decide on a shade colour with white. You can shade grey, blue, blue-grey, biege, brown and probably others.

I also prefer to work down from a white undercoat to my shade colours in the crevices. Highlighting feels more natural than painting shades in to the crevices, but I find it's much easier to get a nice clean colour when it comes to white if you spray it white to begin with.

Thanks for the comments, guys!

i have been starting with grey (in this case a blue-ish grey), and building up (although not with too many steps) to white for the highlights. i've been using nuln oil to shade… is that pale grey wash easy to find in the states?
it just doesn't look like armor to me. should i start with a darker grey, even if i'm going up to a bright white (a la white scar)?

i'll keep experimenting. i'm curious to try shading down vs. highlighting.

Start with grey and work up to a very light grey for highlights.

Pure white (along with pure black) are colours you should almost never use; white is almost always for a sharp highlight on something you want to look very shiny (gems, eyes - not the whites!), and black is usually used to tint or darken and desaturate another shade rather than in its own right.

For clean whites, I tend to avoid washes, or relayer the base immediately after a wash, leaving it just where I want it.

winterdyne wrote:
.

For clean whites, I tend to avoid washes, or relayer the base immediately after a wash, leaving it just where I want it.

what do you mean?

Work from a dark colour (either from wash or not), then put a clean, smooth, even coat over it, leaving the washed/dark colour just in the recesses. Blend or layer away if you want gradients in place.

Example, the uniform white here:


This is done with VGC heavy blue grey (a mid-to-light blue grey with good opacity), washed brown, then layered back with the bluegrey, adding more white till it's just an off white for 3 blended layers. (Thin paint, put on in thin layers, allowing each layer to dry before the next). The main trick is to not overload the brush so the paint goes on THIN (not runny). Final very extremes are done with almost pure white.

The linen is similarly done using Panzer Aces Light mud (a sand/buff colour) and VMC ivory (a yellow/tan off-white).

I love how winterdyne sometimes just casually struts in and presents his "tabletop standard", which is better than the highest standard most people can put out in their lifetime, to people that just start out
This is the eqivalent of Barbie to girls in Wargaming!

Lol. he does illustrate his point though!! thanks winterdyne.

and if i wanted a more weathered look, similar to that link in the OP, would it work to just not be as even in the white coat, or better to add that in after?

and blending is a difficult thing for me. i am trying to learn though!

To go more weathered, the same technique, but rather than aim for a smooth transition between the layers, go for a feathered look; use slightly thicker paint and a fine point brush to do a streaky edge (in the direction you want your weathering streaks to be). Always work toward intensity. Your stroke direction goes where the colour is to be stronger. Keep the paint thin enough to be translucent, and very little on the brush. Lots of fast, short strokes. Leave a bit more of the wash/darker tone showing for more pronounced griminess.

Not white, but shows the 'streaky / feathering' weathering technique:


Note in particular the bottom edge of the leg plates and shoulder/chest bits; this is basically grey, washed brown, then feathered over with greys. Extremes edged by adding ivory to the grey I think. Was a while back. Takes a while, but it looks pretty good; time is a factor of the number of surfaces to do, each one is pretty quick.

The same technique can be used to add texture to muscles etc, just do the streaks in the direction of the muscle 'fibres'.

Winterdyne's advice is, as usual, excellent.

If you want to take a pretty casual shortcut to producing a decent look without lots of layering (this can be time consuming if you have an entire army to paint) you can try zenith hightlighting using regular spraypaint. Just spray black from the bottom, grey from the sides and downward at an angle, then white at a downward angle and from straight down.

It gives this effect that looks OK on power armor, from tabletop distance. You can then wash and layer up to white if you want.




Same effect from the front

If its coming out chalky are you use the GW base paint or the layer?

The base paint does come out chalky I've noticed as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If its coming out chalky are you use the GW base paint or the layer?

The base paint does come out chalky I've noticed as well.

winterdyne wrote:
Start with grey and work up to a very light grey for highlights.

Pure white (along with pure black) are colours you should almost never use

I must be one of the few people who likes the occasional pure white thrown in here and there

I've actually been playing around with enamels and came up with a technique I like for what that (by my standards) produces something I like and can be done pretty fast too. This is the result (sorry for the poor quality photo and WIP model, I literally only just came up with this technique and only have a crappy old camera phone with no booth)...



The method was just to spray it with a white acrylic primer, you have to wait for this to cure good and proper because you'll be painting enamels over the top, I'd say wait a day or two. Then paint the crevices/shadow areas with a beige. Before it's had too long to dry grab some white spirit on a clean brush and blur the edges of the paint. You basically sweep the colour around with your brush, sweep away from areas you want bright toward the areas you want dark. Even though I only initially paint the beige in to the crevices, I "sweep" the entire model when I'm cleaning it, so that even the areas far away from the beige get very lightly filtered with colour.

You can replace the beige with the colour of your choice; grey, blue, whatever. I used beige because this is the head for a horse which is part of a Templar themed bret army and I wanted a sandy/dusty/grimy look to it.

It does take a bit of practice at first but (for me at least) it sure beats layering with acrylics, sooo much faster and gives smoother blends.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

winterdyne wrote:


Before it's had too long to dry grab some white spirit on a clean brush and blur the edges of the paint.

Is white spirit the same thing as paint thinner?

i think a lot of my problem comes from reliance on dry brushing (which seems to create a texture, which in some cases i like, but not for this one).
i haven't quite keyed in on the right amount of watering things down, and my paint often gets quite runny. and i will have to try getting even less paint on my brush (i'm still learning! ).

these tips are great guys! thanks!

and as far as the particular weathering effect i'm going for, a la minas morgul, i've picked a dark copper/brass type color for metal details, and i'm looking to have rust stains and green/blue ish oxidization as well…
not sure what i'm asking really, except for general tips as far as that goes. (again, link http://www.john-howe.com/portfolio/gallery/details.php?image_id=2178)
same concepts apply? go thin, go gradual and build up?

(the idea is these are grey knights who've been stuck in the warp or something. somewhat thematically similar to minas morgul i guess.)

also, i'm perfectly fine with taking my time and trying to learn. it's a secondary army anyhow, and it's not like it will have a lot of models anyhow.

Try using some tissue to wick off excess from the brush, and test the stoke on the back of your hand or thumb.

@winterdyne -- nice infantry guys I like 'em!!

@allseeingskink -- I use pure white too; most commonly to edge highlight the top of feathers, or corners of a white model.


In response to the original question, there are two instances where I paint white: "white" armor, which isn't really white, and objects like white feathers, which only really have white tips.

To paint an object which is heavily shaded like white feathers, there are two techniques -- either layer it up to white at the tip, or what I usually do:
1. First paint it up the entire area to a pure white (either prime it white, or layer light grey, layer offwhite, layer white)
2. Glaze the area lightly with a light grey, light blue, or light brown.
3. Paint a darker glaze in the crevices only.
4. At the very tips, highlight (pure) white. If you're very keen, do an almost white and a very white at the corners.

Form an object like white armor, what I usually do:
1. Prime the armor and airbrush it to a shade close to what I want. It will never be pure white.
2. Lightly glaze the model with a tiny bit of blue mixed with a lot of glazing medium.
3. Wash the recesses with brown (on rare occasions, black; sometimes a sepia)
4. Drybrush or layer the raised areas with offwhite
5. Edge highlight with white

 Talys wrote:
@allseeingskink -- I use pure white too; most commonly to edge highlight the top of feathers, or corners of a white model.

The thing I like about pure white (and pure black) is that it creates a stark, almost cartoon-like contrast, which isn't always appropriate but sometimes it's just what I want. On a model that is mostly light colours, I'd be more inclined to paint white areas with a pure white (with some minimal shading) just to make them really stand out, and likewise on dark models I might do blacks which are pure black with a minimal edge highlights to make more contrast vs using greys.

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Before it's had too long to dry grab some white spirit on a clean brush and blur the edges of the paint.

Is white spirit the same thing as paint thinner?

Maybe, naming conventions vary from country to country. It's an enamel thinner, art stores and hardware stores sell it, typically a few bucks for a big bottle of it. If you're painting with enamels it's best to use synthetic brushes and clean them off with some sort of enamel thinner.

The reason enamels work well is because acrylics can't be "swept" around on a model nearly as easily, acrylics aren't as smooth and dries quickly and as it dries it forms chunks which stop you from creating smooth blends. For quite a while after painting an enamel you can gently dab it with white spirit (or whatever enamel thinner you have) and it'll reactivate.

That's also a downside, if you want to do blended layers you have to wait for the previous layer to fully cure. The upside is in 1 layer of enamel I created a blend that looks as good or better than the horses I painted with acrylics and they required about 5 layers of paint.

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:
Is white spirit the same thing as paint thinner?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit