Painting white (shading)

[th0r]

I have recently decided to do High Elves as my next fantasy army and am having a few problems with my test models. My paint scheme is the same as the one in the army book on page 35; it’s the white and red archer. First off let me say painting white scares me... not exactly my color of choice.

I've tried two methods thus far for shading the cloak. First off the one in the book, where you do the highlighting first and then paint the surroundings white. This looks okay, but the transition from grey to white is poor (this is a technique I do all the time with purple and blue and works quite good). The second method was found on painting clinic, where you do a white base and then do a grey wash over the sunken areas and then dry brush white over the raised areas. I have to say it looks fairly decent but it’s messy and makes the cloak look dirty (not the look I’m going for).

If anyone has any other methods or painting sites, I would greatly appreciate the help.

[Wookie]

311,
I have no other "magic" methods besides the ones you've described; however, I do have a suggestion which is a variant of the second method. Instead of doing a grey wash base paint the area grey (or whatever is the darkest color you're using for that area.) Then do a heavy drybrush of your medium color and then highlight with your lightest color (obviously white.) A dark wash on a light color will make it look "dirty" so IMO your best bet is to build up from your darkest color to your lightest color. May I suggest using something other than grey as your darkest color? I wouldn't use grey because there isn't much choice of a medium color between grey and white. You really need at least 3 shades of a color IMO for a good transition of dark to light. I would use colors something like this:

Example #1:
dark color = shadow grey
medium color = codex grey
light color = skull white

Example #2:
dark color = bronze flesh
medium color = bleached bone
light color = skull white

Example #3:
dark color = regal blue
medium color = ice blue
light color = skull white

Hope I've helped out.

Sincerely,

The Wookie

[th0r]

man.. im a little ticked off right now. I was suppose to have 500pts of HE done by now for a Lustria campaign at the local GW store and instead I have 5 archers in testing stages for the white cloak and 3 waiting for the white cloak. The other 8 are based black, and my silver helms aare unbuilt in a box and my eagle is built but the commander on top isn't built and he needs to be green stuffed. Why hasn't all of this been done? I can't get the white cloaks to come out. I am not new to blending but for some reason this is just not working.

Does anybody have any tips/ major help you can give me

[King Ulrik Flamebeard]

Ahh.. white. I have a certain way of doing it (used this method for my Asur);

The first point is, you cannot highlight white. So what you do is, not paint white. Yes not use white to finish, basically you take you mix upto a colour that is very white (basically an off grey) and then you highlight with pure white.

NB: Your paints must be thinned, very thin as it will have many layers on.

So the colours;

Codex Grey base - Paint it in all the areas you want to be white, recesses included

Codex Grey + Fortress Grey mix - Now depending on how sharp you want you shading you can decide whether to paint it in the recesses or not (theoretically you could shade the recesses all the way to the penulimate shade. As long as the shade is darker than the main colour, so that there is a contrast.

The next steps are simple; add more fortress grey to the mix until you're satisfyed. Then

Pure Fotress Grey

The following highlights are a Fortress Grey and Skull white mix, again repeat until you're happy with the colour. Ideally you should continue until the coat is one or two shades darker than pure white.

Then use Skull White to highlight with.

This is what I did here;

http://img17.echo.cx/img17/358/rbtcrew9lf.jpg
http://img17.echo.cx/img17/4232/hero55kt.jpg


I also used slightly different effect on this next crew, I tried a more blue tone by adding a wash of Ghostly Grey after the Fortress Grey . Worked well, gave it a slightly more magical/mythical look compared to other plain cloth.

http://img17.echo.cx/img17/8686/copyofrbt212mq.jpg

But in all honestly you cannot get white to look good from flat coats of pure white, IMO. Build it up from a darker shade and you'll get your shading.

KU

[Tycho]

I reccomend what King Ulrik Flamebeard suggested as i do the same thing myself and i turns out great for me and its fairly simple to do.

[Harbish]

I find that for white cloth, blue shadows look better than grey.

[Cheredanine]

Actually harbish is right, if you want that "Clean", "High Elf" look, either use Ulriks method but add just a little blue to the mix or using your grey wash technique, do a very thin blue ink wash