Painting White

[mahon]

Answer posted to our Facebook page by Shane 'Raven' Portelance:

Some tips: Get a piece of white cloth and learn the best skill any artist can ever have... "observation". Lay it smooth, make it wavy, bunch it up tight and observe how the different shadows look over the contours. How deep does the shadow get? How fast does it shift from light to dark? Where does it change tone fastest - along the curve or down the sides. White inherently shades very quickly and most effects can be achieved with subtlety. A tiny dot of colour into the white will obtain the subtle results required for most areas of banners and flatter, slightly undulating areas of robes etc. Only the deepest recesses will have darker shadows. Also, consider what you imagine the fabric or surface to be made of. Not all whites are created equal. Some white material has a slight grey tint to it (like cotton), others have the lightest of beige/tan hues (like linen). This will determine what colour to add to your white. Note that in many cases - 'older' white will yellow with time, so keep that in mind as well. With this in mind - there can be 'cold' whites (like white armour) or 'warm' whites like faded parchment or old bones. Some closing tips are about your choice of paint itself. Purchase a paint that is high in pigment content - this will make coverage a lot easier. Also get an acrylic 'extender' to dilute the paint with - not water in this case. The emulsion that holds the pigments in suspension will tend to separate with water, leaving a slightly grainy surface that can create enough shadow on its own to ruin a 'smooth' effect. A quality acrylic extender will keep the white pigment particles more evenly distributed through the thinned paint, thus reducing some of the grainy, shadow effects. Good luck - and have fun! =)

[mahon]

and more from Shane:

Glad to help.. and please feel free to add this other tip as well that I overlooked earlier... When working with white - I always start with the white.. then very lightly shade the shadows into that... I never try to build up white on top of underlying darker colours. Start with the white... add the darkest colour you plan to use to the deepest area you want to place it - then with a damp brush - blend the darker area out into the lighter area.

[Kenza]

That's why the whites look so bad on my models...

So we need to thin it down before we use it right?

[Muskie]

If you're going over black you need the lightest foundation grey, it is a good first color to base your white on. The other option if you want more of an off white or creme white is to use beige or bleached bone. Then you need several thin layers of white.

White is one of the few colors where I don't use washes/glazes, just patiently build up layers. Sometimes you only have time for say three layers... I don't paint a lot of white but yeah you can use Vallejo beige and mix more and more white into it. Bleached Bone at least the last pots I bought are inferior to old bleached bone GW used to sell so now I prefer Vallejo beige. I've read that some people really like morrow white or something in the P3 range. One of their factions the one that starts with M, menoth or something, has a lot of white and it is a creamy white. You might want to Google that, otherwise your stuck with mixing skull white and whatever the lightest GW grey is, until you get up to pure white. Again Vallejo makes some nice greys that I use now instead of GW Dogma of Codex and Fortress.