Need Advice on Painting white

[Jaaps]

Hi there, this is my first post, so please excuse me for not doing this properly as I am a complete noob :tongue:

I've recently sculpted cloaks onto some 40k Kasrkin Storm troopers, with the intend of giving them fur around the neck representing that "winter clothing" feel. So I've recently sculpted the cloak and the fur with no problems (as I google'd some tutorials) and now I'm onto painting one so that I can get a feel for paint schemes.
Let me give an example of the model I'm talking about...

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Anyway the problem I'm having currently experiencing is that when i paint white it looks really messy. You can see brush stroke lines etc. I know i have to thin down the paint and paint in layers but the problem I'm having is that I dont know how 'thin', thin enough is. Can anyone give me advice on this. Also on how to make the white look more real with shading and all that sorts.

Any would be helpful!

Thanks to everyone in advance.

 

[Garshnak]

Hello Jaaps and welcome NOOB! Hehe, no you're alright.

Here's an article on painting white, it's helpful enough (and not too technical): http://blog.brushthralls.com/?page_id=1967

But that only covers the usage of colours, layering and blending to achieve a good white (which partially depends on theme, I'd go for a colder white in your case, with blues).

Now on getting a smooth coat, it firstly depends on the smoothness of the surface you're painting on.
And in the case of greenstuff, a bunch of smoothing with alcohol/water and sandpapering goes a long way. After that it is important to degrease the surface so paint sticks better if you used your grubby fingers on it (though you already basecoated it).
Next the spray on basecoat, it actually pays off not to give it a thick basecoat and full coverage. Because if you leave it fine and slightly grainy (or 'dusty' as some call it, not splattery!), the paint pigments can actually settle better and makes it easier to paint smoothly.
And finally, the thinning of the paint of itself (since the smooth application of thinned down paints is also subject to skill, so practice is important), while a lot of people use water, which works well enough. Others (like me) prefer using other thinners (look em up, there's articles enough about thinning paints actually), because water has a high surface tension and this gives it a tendency to pool. Dishwashing soap is a cheap method to this.
As for the paint to thinner medium ratio, you'd want a milky consistency, you'd have to practice a bit on a smooth surface at first till you get a smooth coverage. The actual ratio varies per paint so there's no strict formula for that. But the paint you've been using might've been slightly too thin.

Hope this helps, good luck!

 

[Jaaps]

Cheers Garshnak, I didn't expect someone to reply so quickly.

That is exactly the type of article I needed. Thanks a lot, I'll post up some pics of how it comes out once I get onto it

I'll have to sand down that green stuff cloak of mine, as it was done very roughly and not to great precision. Cheers for the reply tho, it helps greatly

 

[10 ball]

From the guide, the comment -

The best way to ruin a blend is by overworking it while it dries. If you continue to work over the paint as it thickens, your brush will drag furrows through the paint and ruin your smooth finish. Sometimes you’ll even pull away layers of paint with the brush. This leaves glaringly obvious holes that are difficult to fill. Even though my blend at this point isn’t perfect, I leave it alone and move on to the next one.

I do this all the time, its so frustrating. Aaaaahhhh!

 

[Jaaps]

hahaha 10 ball, this just show how easy it is to make that common mistake lol more reason to pay more attention to this areas and "to let them dry properly". Thanks for the comments to both you and Garshnak.

 

[RuneBrush]

Personally I'd paint the cloak with Astronimican Grey first. This is one of GW's foundation paints and the coverage is superb. White is a notoriously difficult colour to paint (as is yellow), so getting a solid base colour on is important. Also (and I'm sure that you'll read this on numerous other posts), thin your paint down. It looks like you've use white straight out of a pot in your pictures. By using a foundation paint to put a solid colour on and then using thinned white to go over the top, you should end up with a very smooth finish.

pete

 

[Jaaps]

Yea I did RuneBrush, yea the white I've painted on is a combination of both bad prep and the green stuff surface not being as smooth as i would've liked. Hopefully I will get this sorted out with the rest of the squad I'm planning to do. I did try to thin down the white a bit but I failed due to inexperience and doing it blindly with no guide. I'll have to sand down the GS so that it is nice and smooth before I start on the cloak again. So with the Astronimican Grey, do I need to thin that down as well, and then build layers until I get a solid cover, or is the foundation paints developed so that I don't need to thin it down, and then build up layers of thinned white on top of that? Sorry I know its probably such a NOOB question to ask lol

Thanks for all the replies

 

[shakes]

Hey, with your foundation paint you'll still want to thin it but not quite as severely, I also wouldn't go direct to white after the foundation. I'd find something in between white and your foundation and go from there so that by the time you attempt pure white you already have a near white surface. Also in regards to your cloaks I would either do all your smoothing with a brush and oil or choose a different medium, green stuff doesn't take well to sandpaper. Milliput or a milliput green stuff mix would probably work better for you.
Shakes.

 

[IdofEntity]

Looks like you used black primer. Try adding a basecoat of astronomicon grey, a wash of a bluish grey (such as space wolves grey?) to give it a cool (cold, not awesome) hue, and then work up to white with very thin layers, or drybrushing if you're more comfortable with that. Leave the blue/grey showing in the recesses.

 

[GraveRisen]

On this guy here I basecoated the white in space wolves grey, washed it with a 50/50 blue wash/water mix. Then space wolves re-hilight then worked up to white from there. The key to white is to do 2+ thinner layers of straight white to finish it off instead of 1 thicker layer

View attachment 5614

 

[Jaaps]

Wow GraveRisen that's a nice model.
Well i finally got to painting them, the mixture of University Assignments and learning about dynamics, engineering statistics and material micro-structures have really taken up my time of late. Lucky i had some free time today and decided to get into my two models.
So here they are;

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As you can see the second picture of the first model with a cloak looks a bit dodgier than the last cloak but that's only because I did a shocking job with gs. I'm very happy with how they are looking. I think I used up to 5 or 6 layers of thinned down skull white and 2 layers of thinned down astronomic grey, with a thin layer of washed down codex grey(thinking now i probably should've used a colour like space wolves Grey.

But anyway, what I'm onto now is how to make the rest of the armour in a winter scheme and aren't sure of how to best achieve that. should i make the clothing the same white as the cloak and the armour a greyish blue colour??? Or should I swap the two. I' just worried that once I finish the models will look to "white" and not contrasting with anything. I was also thinking maybe a bluish white armour that sorta looks like light ice bluish??

Any thoughts and how would I achieve this?

 

[tidoco2222]

Keeping your paint really thin helps, a bluey grey base is a good way to start Space Wolf Grey is not a bad base colour and then just keep adding more and more white until you have pure white for the final highlight, keeping the paint to the consistency of milk will help keep the chalkiness out of the white, the blue tone in the base colour will give the white a cold look, you can go from Fortress Grey to white depending on the look you are going for.

 

[MidKnight150]

When I do white, I start with a base of astronomicon gray. I then highlight with 2-3 thin layers of skull white. Following this I make a very thin wash with shadow gray, then once dry do an edge highlight with skull white.