Recently been painting up my Saint Celestine model and I decided I wanted to give her a white sword, as it seems like a perfect way to represent its purity and holyness. Question is, how exactly could I do this? The obvious answer would be to just paint it pure white and leave it at that, but I can see it looking a little, er, bland in comparison with the rest of the figure. Anyone got any ideas how I could make it look a bit more interesting and shade/highlight it whilst still keeping it at a near-pure white colour?

i use ghostly grey on my tanks (tau) and got a recepy from a friend for getting brighter colors for it. Use a light blue, like sky blue first. over that you use a ghostly grey and work up to white highlights.

Sounds like quite a good idea to me, I shall have to test this =). Thanks for the advice, and have some rep for it =).

This is going to sound like a really bad idea but it will work:

Shade an area of the sword (towards the hilt or the point) down towards black and pull the highlights towards white really quickly, slowing down the closer to white you get.

I shall give it a test, and decide which I prefer =).

Use lots of greys, with white highlights. Just white will definately look bland, whereas greys + white will make it look more.. white :)

For painting white blades id suggest first decideding whether to use greys or blues. you should have a slight bit showing around the hilt area. Personally Id use blue, it will add a bit of colour to the blade while the greys may look to bland.

For mixing Id start with a pure coat of ice blue, then steadyily mix more and more white into this. Make sure you use lots of water with this, too little water will turn your sword into some form of glowing club of justice.

Dan

Could always paint it like it's made of marble. There are several tutorials online, and one on this site i believe.

For painting white blades id suggest first decideding whether to use greys or blues. you should have a slight bit showing around the hilt area. Personally Id use blue, it will add a bit of colour to the blade while the greys may look to bland.

Dan has it right here. Two main methods of using white is to go from a blue or grey base. However, might I suggest using Space Wolf Grey? It is a sort of blend between grey and blue and I have had some good luck with it recently. Admittedly I was painting blue but a very good highlight colour. Adding white into this will make it lighter and you can blend it in nicely to final pure highlights of white.

glowing club of justice.

I have one of those. They're fun. :D

Kuffy

Thanks for all the help guys =). I shall continue testing these styles on random blades and assorted spare bitz to see which works out best, then shall implement onto my figure. I'm thinking I'll end up using Space Wolves Grey at some point though, as it seems to be a perfect shading colour whilst still looking whiteish. Shall post pics when I'm done :P.