Painting White

[ElectricPaladin]

Can anyone help me with a recipe for painting white using GW paints? My Order of the Argent Shroud Sisters of Battle need white cloaks, and my test model showed me that I do not know what I'm doing.

The models aren't even primed yet, so I'm good to follow whatever process you recommend.

EDIT: For context, the Sisters are going to have metallic silver armor. The process for that is going to be: leadbelcher base, nuln oil wash, heavy leadbelcher drybrush, light ironbreaker drybrush, and MAYBE runefang steel highlights on top of that. Their guns will be leadbelcher and mephiston red, and the inner lining of their armor - where visible - will be mephiston red as well.

[Iceman]

Since your models aren't primed yet, you may want to consider priming them using white primer. That makes it easier to paint with white paint (I think it is Citadel White).

Having said that, white cloth is very difficult in my experience. I generally either avoid it, or when I have to I use a series of darker colors layering up to white. So one way is to start with what used to be Snakebite Leather in the darkest recesses then lightening up through Bleached Bone and finally to white. I have also done this with shades of gray. You may also be able to get a similar effect with a sepia wash and then layering white.

[ElectricPaladin]

Ima be lazy now: can you recommend the specific layers of gray? There are a lot of different grays. And I assume that if I'm layering up from dark grey, I want to prime black instead of white - is that so?

[Lunar Camel]

Iceman has it right. With the other colors that you have, white primer is better (your reds will show up easier too).

One question is do you want a warm or cool white. A warm white will have tones of brown. A cool white will have more tones of gray/gray-ish blue.

As for the cape, if you are not confident in your painting ability you can kinda cheat. Instead of using several layers of gray or beige, you could even use just one.

For a cool white, start with Astronimican Grey/Celestra Grey. Leave this in the recesses of the cape and paint your wite over it. Use thin, watered down layers to get an even coverage.

If you want a warm tone, start with Dheneb Stone/Rakarth Flesh. Again, leave it in the recess and paint your white.

Practice makes perfect.

[krittoris]

armour:

1. basecoat skull white spray

2. coat whole model with: 40/30/30 glaze medium, black wash, dark blue wash (gw new washes cant remember the new names)

3. tidy with the white layer paint from GW. remember to thin it down and use alot of light coats rather then one heavy coat.

4. add details, battle damage as you wish

cloth:

1. basecoat codex grey

2. 80/20 codex grey and skull white (cover most the cloak except the lowest recesses.

3. 60/40 codex grey and skull with (again covering the next level of raised areas.

4. 40/60 codex grey skull white (as above, the next up)

5. 20/80 codex grey skull white (this is the most raised areas)

6. highlight skulll white in thin lines along the highest raised parts of the cloth.

this worked a charm for me, and kept the colours the same, because all im doing is lighting grey, im not doing different greys.

[Cpt Codpiece]

i like to use a grey primer, haze grey from tamiya is great.

then either fortress or SW grey depending on the tone of white i am after (SW for a blue white, fortress for green white),
then layer on the key shade...... ulthuan grey. once you use your chosen black line wash (with either blue or green tint),
re touch with ulthuan and edge flash white.

[whargoul666]

You got to look at it this way, prime black and your darks and metalics will look good, prime white and your light colors will really pop. You could prime black and then paint white on any light colored areas (the white cloth and the red trim) and start from there. Or, you could prime white and paint all the metalics black. This would give you an advantage with those light colors. It all just depends on the level of color saturation you will ultimately achieve (ie. mostly dark prime black, mostly bright prime white).

I think you should build that cloth up out of cool greys too. With your bright (warm) reds as contrast colors the cool white would help balance things out.