Painting White

[Frosty the Pirate]

Hey folks.

Been working on one of my little extras for my army for Feb, my "Wolf Standards". I wanted to paint the hanging cloth/paper very bright white (which I'm intending to weather with some brown wash later) but I can't seen to get the white to go on smooth and consistently.

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, or if white is just really hard to paint like that.

So far I've put 3 coats of white onto the black primer (yeah. prolly a mistake, but I wasn't going to buy a whole can of white primer for 3 models)

I will point out I'm using a pot of Skull White I bought about a year ago before they changed the paints, and it seems a bit watery compared to my other paints I'm still using from around the same time.

Am I doing something wrong, or is my paint just failing me?

[thesanityassassin]

Basically you don't want to paint white straight over black. The easiest way to get good coverage over black priimer in as few layers as possible is to work up either from a brown or a grey. I don't know the new colours well enough, but I would use like Bestial Brown, Vermin Brown, White, or Codex Grey, Fortress Grey White.

Apparently there is a new white base paint that can go over black, but I've never tried it.

Once you get a solid covering, in order to smooth out the finish water some white down quite a bit and paint very thin layers over all the white....it'll settle nicely and smooth out the surface. Just make sure it goes on thin or it will run and pool.

[thesanityassassin]

But in general it is a real pain in the ass.....There's a reason I primed my Scars white!

[Jack Shrapnel]

okay two problems... first black undercoat.... second... old skull white... it doesn't cover anything... it doesn't even cover white well!

So what you want to do is start with a light tone grey (old astronomicon grey... I have no idea what it's called now...) it has enough white to serve as a good basecoat and since it's a foundation paint (or whatever it's called now) will cover the black well... if you're trying to fix the white that is already on use this quite thinned.

cover this with the new white... don't use old skull white or even over this light grey you're talking two coats...

with the stuff you've already put coats of white on already, you're probably getting too thick soon... so I'd try one run of the new white overtop... unless you're still seeing black through it... if you are seeing any black at all right now, go to the astronomicon grey (or whatever it's called now) step and go to new white from there....

should give you a consistent coverage....

white is one of the hardest colours to get smooth... Matt's white scars are an excellent example of this for sure... my favourite was that one unit of eldar he did... before the new paints even... I don't know what those stupid elf guys are called... but they were so pretty it almost made me stop hating Eldar for a moment... it was brief... but it was real.... but I digress.... use grey.

[redshirt2375]

My rule when painting white has always been

1) for parchment/bones = brown -> white
2) for pure white = grey -> white

So far it's worked out great for me.

Just my 2cents

[empirearmy]

AAHHHHH....painting white....

I am not much of a guy with good paint ideas but here we go. It take 4 steps. I am gonna trust you are going for a weathered look like you said. So...

1. cover the black primer in a light brown, nice and even, might have to do two coats.

2. 50/50 same light brown/white, one coat

3. 25/75 same light brown/ white, one coat

4. white on the edges


After if you want you can wash with a 50/50 brown wash/water mix then white on the edges again.

Try those steps. If it fails....well blame the person who invented tabletop gaming, cus you would not have this problem if it wasn't for them.

Mike

[usscott]

just don't paint white . I use a off tint I like blue work work in layers.
the best white are done in a lot of thin layers .