Painting Lots and Lots of White

[Iron Father Ferrum]

So in the past, whenever I've needed to paint an area white, I've laid down a thin coat of Fortress Gray or Codex Gray over my ubiquitous black primer first then painted the white on over top of that. Never had any issues with it at all -- the white is bright and solid, not at all chalky.

 

Now, however, I'm trying to paint entire Marines white instead of just small sections of pauldron or capes, and this little trick isn't working. I do NOT have white or gray primer available, since I'm deployed to Iraq right now and it takes a while for anything to get here. So I threw together most of a Tactical Marines, brush-primed his black, and then started on that thin coat of gray and IT went on kind of chalky; the white that went on top came out looking like garbage.

 

Does anyone have any quick tips about how to paint large surfaces white without these kind of problems? I look at professionally done models for White Scars (for example) and marvel because my whites never come out looking like that.

[winterdyne]

More stages is generally the trick - if your grey base colour is nice and solid, mix white into the grey and apply that, then more white, then more white, keeping the paint reasonably thin and even. Once you've got a reasonably white-ish colour going on, start using the mix for highlights rather than general painting. Again, from black, work through more stages to avoid chalkiness. The chalkiness is pigment that's spread out unevenly - watery paints of very different colour from the underlying colour exhibit this behaviour. You can to some extent get around it by mixing a medium in which helps the suspension of pigment (glaze medium etc), but the best way to avoid is is to build up the colour gradually. For white on black this means a lot of stages through intermediate greys / browns whatever.

[Hemal]

The Korsarro Khan article a while back is really good. Add some slight amounts of Graveyard and Space WOlves grey to smooth the transition, and acceopt that you'll probably need 3-4 coats at varying shades before applying the white, painting pure white over black or grey undercoats is a little stark on flat armour like Space marines...

[averykess]

you might also want to pick up a pot of Vallejo Air in white. The pigment particles are much smaller in airbrush paints.

[GumbaFish]

I have found in the past with other colors, like red, that I was trying to do over a black undercoat it helped to first overbrush them. Overbrushing is kind of inbetween drybrushing and normal painting, the motion is more like drybrushing but you have a bit more wet paint on your brush. If your grey is covering the black fine then perhaps you could try doing an overbrush of white over the grey then a regular layer of white. Other than that the other suggestions of slowly mixing white into grey for your successive layers is a good point, I can't say I envy you...I'd just pick a different scheme though.

[Hemal]

I started painting myBhramastras yesterday - am anticipating 3 coats of the graveyard/SW Grey mix, before starting to hit white, so in all probably 10 coats - these are GD minis, but even on standard squads I'd reckon I would have to do at least 6 coats (deepest shade, 2 highlights up to white, wash in devlan, shade with charadon, rehighlight with white)