Ultramarine Veterans - help with shading white

[JetfireUK]

Hi Folks,

Apologies that I haven't posted in a while. Since November I had been working two jobs so I had no time/motivation to paint anything. Now that it's the start of a new year I wanted to get stuck back in with my Ultramarines. One thing that I've immediately spotted is that my white looks flat.

Can you give me some tips how I can make it appear more 3D? If it helps my method for painting white starts with a Foundation Paint Astronican Grey followed by Space Wolves Grey and then gradually increasing Skull White.

Here's a shot of my two most figures to help show you what I mean. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

http://www.coolminiornot.com/268383

 

[Legacy Account]

Nowt wrong with the colours you're using.

Personally I prefer to start white and shade down as opposed to start dark and highlight up. I use thin glazes as it doesn't take much to tint white. I find it makes me think more carefully about where shadows would be on the mini...

 

[Oberon76h]

Nowt wrong with the colours you're using.

Personally I prefer to start white and shade down as opposed to start dark and highlight up. I use thin glazes as it doesn't take much to tint white. I find it makes me think more carefully about where shadows would be on the mini...

I too. Start white then astronomican grey, fortress grey and codex grey (deep shadow). Final retouching and thin glaze with very wathered down skull white.
Minia here was painted with this sequence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjB9Jcmzb4w

 

[Wyrmypops]

It just looks like you need to enjoy more contrast on the mini. The areas that are currently being treated with pure white, reduce them in size, increase the size of areas in the off-white tones so more ranges in tone can give the mini that rounded/less-flat nature you're after.

It's something I recognised I'd fallen into last year. Over highlighting. I do as you do, working from a dark basecoat, blending up to the highlights. Spacemunkie's proceess can also be employed to rescue instances where our process has fallen into that over-highlighting trap. Some heavily thinned inks reduce their opacity, applied with control rather than washed on, to tint some shading back in there in the manner of a glaze. It's saved me snarling in disgust at some of my minis.

 

[JetfireUK]

Thanks for the comments - I'm going to view that thread tonight on youtube. It sounds that the approach with white is the reverse of normal painting so it'll be interesting to see how it'll help the rest of my painting. Cheers!

 

[JetfireUK]

Hi Folks,

Right, I thought to add a photo of my recent Sternguard marine which I managed to get finished tonight.

I've experimenting with my painting to start to move away from the edge highlighting on the armour towards a more blended (and hopefully) more realistic approach. I've also added a few chips to the armour and blended the white helmet so that there's a more graduated tone.

I used the box image to help get a more graduated effect to the white although I understand that I'm somewhere off at the moment. Any tips? That youtube video was fairly helpful but any additional info would be great.

Cheers,

Oli