Hello again there dear denizens of LO…
After I ‘persuaded’ a friend to paint his marines white, I figured it was only fair for me to try it out myself.
It wasn’t quite as simple as I had at first suspected, so I decided that I would help the poor guy out with this tutorial.
First up, we prime white.
Sounds simple, but you might need to shop around a bit for a decent one. The GW one is fairly good, but I’ve had some awful cans of it, so I would feel bad ‘reccomending’ it. I also tried the Vallejo one, and that was awful. Maybe I got a bad can, but again, I’m not reccomending it. Probably the safest bet is some car primer. Also, it’s cheaper!
So, here we go, a white mini!
Next, we need to black out the bits that are going to be darker colours.
It’s pretty important to do this bit first, just ‘cos I’m normally not neat with my basecoats. If you are, maybe do this after. Up to you.
At this point, we need to decide where we’re lighting this model from. This might seem like an ‘advanced’ technique, but it’s very simple really.
Put the model under a light, normally facing into it. Look where the light is falling, and where the shadows are. Remember this, but if you forget, you can always put it under a light again.
Anyway, this is the stage I like to call ‘the panda’. Isn’t he cute?
Now, I did my metals next, as the way I do it involves some washes, and they tend to get messy.
So, here he is with metallics done.
Ok, this bit may make you think I am a bit mental.
Wash the recesses of the model, and any area that would be in shadow (remember from above?), with shadow grey.
This looks a bit messy, but roll with me.
Now, what we basically do is work our way up from our shadow grey to white by mixing it, firstly with space-wolf grey, then a layer of pure SW grey, then mix white into the SW grey, before a final layer of pure white.
You may notice that I did very few highlights of white on the back, as I had chosen to light him from the front. I generally left the back at the space wolf grey level, although there are a few that are above it.
Anyway, here are a selection of WIP shots, going from dark to light:
So, that is the white done!
Ok, so, it took a while (about 4/5 hours I believe), but you can cut that down by using fewer layers (I think I did around 10-12 in total), or by using a similar lighting style, but using very few washes rather that layering up, as I did.
If you want to try this, I would mix SW grey with white around 50/50, and wash the whole model. Then wash pure SW grey over fairly large areas centered on the main recesses and shadows. Then 50/50 SW grey and shadow grey, in smaller areas; before finally doing pure shadow grey in the darkest areas.
These washes would have to be very thin (around 3:1 water:paint), and probably add a bit of glaze medium to help make slightly nicer transitions.
So, you might be interested in seeing what the finished model looked like…
Well, here is a pic or two, and there are some more over *here* in my Black Dragon blog =)
Cheers guys, hope that was of some use, and feel free to reply/PM/email if you have any questions or would like to know anything else…
-t.
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