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This is the question that has bugged me for some years now, how come white is sutch a hard colour to paint in comparisment to say green, blue, red silver, copper, purple grey or brown?
to little pigments and the colour is transparent, too many pigments and it is thicker then oatmeal.

And where are the shadewashes for white to speed up the prosses of painting white?

I have a fair amount of armys i want to do in a white combo but i wont bother to do it cuz painting white involves 2-3 layers just to get a solid basecoat, and then you need 2-3 more layers for the highlight. it aint worth the time when i can paint a realy nice looking tabletop quality army in more or less any other colour whit just 1 layer of base coat, 1 shade wash and 1 layer of highlight.

Can't tell you why it's this way, but my answer is to use an airbrush. Flat, opaque white looks great and it's easy to shade with washes and filters.

In practice, it isn't the best idea to paint white as you can't go any brighter than white (can't highlight white because white is already the brightest color). Best idea is to start with a light gray base coat, then go brighter gray until it's very close to white. In the GW paint line, it would be best to do it this way unless you already have a bright gray primer on your model:

Celestra Grey (base)
Ulthuan Grey (layer)
White Scar (highlight)

If you're already using a light gray primer, you can choose to leave out the Celestra Grey. Also, if you want to shade Celestra Gray before using Ulthuan Gray as a highlight, GW recommends Nuln Oil. I would personally use a thinned down Nuln Oil as I think it would be too dark right out of the pot. You can use either water or Lahmian Medium to thin the shade before applying it.

It's something I've had to learn the hard way as well, but it does make painting "white" a good bit easier. Hope that helps!

SG

The reasons is because the color beneath shines through very easily with white. Even though the pigment in white usually is opaque compared to for example yellows. The color beneath will show through since the contrast with the white is so strong.

The only way i know for a quick tabletop white with minimum effort is to prime the model white and pin shade the model and skip highlight.

If you have an undercolor that is darker then white it will take a few layers no matter what.

If you want to spend a little more effort you could prime it in light grey then pin shade then highlight with white.

Or as techsoldaten said, with an airbrush the white coat becomes very even, so even if the color beneath shines through, it will be even so it wont bother.

Some people have posted some semi correct answers.

The reason as to why white is such a bitch is because it's one of the most difficult colors to manufacture and produce as a result it's pigment count is MUCH higher then normal paints. That's what white always drys out or gets super chalky. This is also why it's a royal bitch to get to lay flat, because all the pigment are present. Honestly the best white I have ever used is vallajo.

But my fav, absolute favorite white is reapers ghost white, it has a slight blue hue to it that it's just solid.

So you mean that if I add more acrylic medium to the paint(GW lahmian medium for example). It would be easier to paint and cover better with fewer layers?

I cant see the logic in that but if you can explain it to me in detail I would like to know how it works.

 DanceOfSlaanesh wrote:
So you mean that if I add more acrylic medium to the paint(GW lahmian medium for example). It would be easier to paint and cover better with fewer layers?

I cant see the logic in that but if you can explain it to me in detail I would like to know how it works.

No you need to add a thinner that helps break down the pigments, either alcohol or ammonia based thinners. And you just have to be super patient and do lot of thin coats to build up white.

As mentioned it's best to avoid white, but if you really want pure white, first lay down a layer of a light grey, then go to white. Because trying to lay white on black will make you want to kill yourself.

The logic is this, you got your pigment, that's what gives paint it's color, and you have a medium, for example lamiant or what ever, and the pigment is mixed in and give it paint. Well white pigment is the hardest to make, simply because white is not a natrually occurring color, if you look in the wild, pure white is very rare. So in order to get that actual white you need LOTS of colorless pigment, this makies it super chalky because the pigment is clumping together.

The reason you want to use an alcohol mix is because the acrylic paints will break down and separate in it unlike water.

Using a medium like liment you are just diluting the pigments basically decreasesing the parts per million giving you thinner paint where alcohol will change it's consistency making it thinner and helping it lay flatter because it breaks those pigments down.

I have paint stripped white painted models in alcohol and I cant say I have noticed the pigment break down or dissolve in any way.
Something happens with the acrylic medium yes, but the pigment stays the same I my eyes.

I believe white can be chalky because of the material the pigment is made of. I use a white from an art store that use titanium dioxide pigment and its not chalky at all.

Not saying you are wrong. But it doesn't match up with my experience.

You are not going to see it break down with your eyes it's happening on a much smaller level. And you don't thin with just alcohol you use a water alcohol mix.

Give this a go, get a sprue prime it black, take 3 tests. Take 3 equal drops of paint, mix one with one drop of water, one with one drop of alcohol, and one with one drop of 50 50 mix, you are going to notice a difference.

Or as you mentioned, you stripped white paint with alcohol. If you try and do that with a medium like lamiant it's not going to work. A medium simply acts as a....well....medium for the pigments, a thinner breaks them down.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
A medium simply acts as a....well....medium for the pigments, a thinner breaks them down.

Err, no, that's not how it works. Acrylic paints have two components: the acrylic polymer, and the pigment powder suspended in it. Thinner isn't going to break down the pigments because they're solid particles. What the thinner actually does is dilute the acrylic medium that the pigment is suspended in, which may give better flow properties. Adding clear medium, on the other hand, dilutes the pigment across a larger volume of carrier and makes it more transparent. The two have entirely different purposes.

Or as you mentioned, you stripped white paint with alcohol. If you try and do that with a medium like lamiant it's not going to work.

Well yes, because alcohol is a solvent and acrylic medium isn't. Alcohol strips paint because it chemically breaks down the cured acrylic polymer chains (which contain the embedded pigment particles) and weakens its bond with the model. This has nothing to do with the pigment, the solvent is acting 100% on the acrylic medium.

Well the more you know.

But both will have different effects and really my who point was, if you want a better smoother white, you are going to need some thinner agent to break it down. A mixture of water and alcohol, or Windex (this one is a great debate in the modeling world) you are going to get a much thinner, even, and smooth coat of white.

Using just the lamiant medium won't get you the same results.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
The reason as to why white is such a bitch is because it's one of the most difficult colors to manufacture and produce as a result it's pigment count is MUCH higher then normal paints. That's what white always drys out or gets super chalky. This is also why it's a royal bitch to get to lay flat, because all the pigment are present.

I'm sorry but you cannot be any more wrong.

All paints are produced by suspending pigments in medium. This was how paints were made since the invention of paint, and it still holds true today. White doesn't have more pigments than other colors because its white and is not the reason for any of the things you claim. The reason for the translucent quality of citadel whites are precisely because of the type of white pigment they use. There are generally two types of whites used in painting in the industry, one is the translucent white and the other is opaque white. In oil painting, you will typically have both whites - zinc white and titanium white - in your inventory because they're used for different applications. When painting, sometimes you need the whites to bleed thru the color underneath or you need to maintain certain translucency when mixing paints - here you use the zinc white - it is capable to providing the white to the color mixture without making it opaque. Titanium white has much higher pigment count and is very opaque by nature - one of the more common use of this titanium white is to add pigments into other colors so that the resulting color has higher opacity.

The reason why citadel whites need so many more coats is because the nature of the paint is closer to this zinc white.

Fair enough that's how it was explained to me and if that's wrong then so be it.

The more you know.

White is no harder to paint than Yellow or a true Black.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
White is no harder to paint than Yellow or a true Black.

Yellow is worse then white imo.

I'd you are talking about having them lay correctly and smooth, yellow sucks, if you taking about painting black so that it does not look weird yeah black and white suck. Yellow is equally as hard.

I'm talking about laying down *good* paint for any of those 3 colors.

Yellow is even worse because yellow pigment is generally more transparent then most white pigments.

Makes it virtually impossible to paint over a darker color.

Which is why its a good idea to undercoat with white.

And why many get frustrated with yellows because they try to force it do things it can not.

 DanceOfSlaanesh wrote:
Yellow is even worse because yellow pigment is generally more transparent then most white pigments.

Makes it virtually impossible to paint over a darker color.

Which is why its a good idea to undercoat with white.

And why many get frustrated with yellows because they try to force it do things it can not.

Only way I have seen yellow done that looks good is with browns and oranges, and little bits of yellow highlight to let you know hey this is yellow