Smooth blends when painting white.

[PTS]

I\'m trying to create slightly warm off-white, weathered looking armour for White Scars marines. Having trouble achieving ultra smooth blends from a white/bone/brown base mix, blending up to highlight until it gets near pure white. Even though I\'m diluting paint heavily with water, I still get lines in the blends. Is there a different approach or anything I can add to the mix to make life easier?

White is a notoriously hard to paint with good reason. It seems to get chalkier than other colors. I started with Vallejo paints, but am switching to GW for this as I think their paints are better for the job (less dry or something).

 

[Jericho]

GW\'s whites suck, I wouldn\'t use them if I were you. P3 has some really great white, bone, khaki and grey colors. Very solid coverage, and they go on quite smooth I find. Something that will help with chalky/grainy transitions is doing multiple layers of each step in the color progression. Time consuming, but necessary to get really smooth whites.

Anyway, with something like WS bikers, I would personally try to avoid blending up from a dark color. It\'s just so incredibly time consuming, especially on an army scale. Priming white, and washing in some shades/darklining is probably an easier option.

If you have an airbrush, I\'d be using that for the whites on the bike. Prime either white or grey, and get the majority of the subtle blending taken care of in a fraction of the time.

It\'s even easier if you paint the models in a few separate pieces. The guns or any other areas which are mostly dark can be painted separate to avoid messing up the white.

 

[PTS]

Thanks for the response. I paint everything as separates before gluing, and am far more of a painter than a gamer, so don\'t mind spending a long time painting the army to look nice (such the ork in my profile, part of a separate project). I\'m definitely going to pick up some P3 paints, as I do hear good things. Was quite interested on hearing more about your vehicle airbrushing technique (as I will have a lot of bikes). I do have an airbrush and need some tips.

 

[freakinacage]

one of the best white armoured minis i have seen was one of spacemunkies. he shaded down from white, so i would do the same

 

[Jericho]

Well I\'m no expert with the airbrush yet, I\'m just getting started with it myself In addition to the basic technique I\'ve tried the hairspray and sea salt weathering technique that Giganticdark used on his amazing large scale Ultramarine which has been on the Top 10 lately. It works pretty well, but the results are hard to predict! Just be careful not to use too much hairspray if you try it. A thick layer of hairspray means all the paint will come off instead of just small chips.

 

[Trevor]

What Freak said. Its easier to start white and shade down. The other way is to have a base colour and layer many many layers of dilute white over it, it works, but takes a long time.