Rift Stalkers - Warm or Cold White?

[Aothaine]

Hey everyone!

 

I'm trying to decide if I should paint a warm white or cold white for my Rift Stalkers. I've looked up many guides but I'm still having difficulties deciding. 

 

I am planning on using the mars terrain paint for the bases as I think the red bases will make the white armor pop. I have a few miniatures I purchased from the Dark Imperium box that I will be doing some testing on but I was curious if any of you had any insight into this.

 

Using the guides provided by the Army Painter I like the options listed below:

 

White

Celestra Grey: Base

Nuln Oil: in recesses

Ulthuan Grey: over the Celestra Grey parts

White Scar: High light edges

 

White Scars

Corax White: Base

Ulthuan Grey: over Corax White parts

Agrax Earthshade: in recesses

White Scar: High light edges

 

Cold White

Celestra Grey: Base

Drakenhof Nightshade: Recesses

Ulthuan Grey: Over the Celestra Grey parts

White Scar: High light edges

 

Most of these use the same color they are just swapping out the shade. The cold white might be my favorite but I think the White Scars might look better with red bases. I'm not positive yet. There was a member on these forums that painted a really good white but I can't remember their name and it would be awesome to see their miniatures again and learn their formula as well.

 

Most people I have talked to about this project have doubts I'll be able to get the white bright and pure looking. I'm thinking of doing a lot of blending and most likely around 5-8 layers of very thin paint using the lamian medium instead of water and I heard it is better to dilute white paints with the medium to prevent a chalky look. With all this said I will most likely be painting up from a black primer as I like how smooth black primer goes onto the models. 

 

So what do you guys think? Is the red base going to work like I think? Should I go with the cold white or the warmer agrax earthshade look? Or perhaps the nuln oil look? Something I noticed with the nuln oil shade is that it made the recesses really stick out. Almost too much and gave the armor an oily dirty look. I want to go with a crisp white look.

 

Also, if I go with the red base should I dirty up the legs with red weathering? This might be a little ambitious but it might provide some more depth to the model and the army as a whole. 

 

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

 

[Razblood]

Trust me, don't start from black. I spent several years doing that and found it to be a massive exercise in frustration.

 

You'd be better using a grey primer and from the limited imagery I've seen of this chapter going with cold white.

 

As for basing, a very light dry brush of your basing colour works pretty well, focusing around the feet and lower section of the greaves.

Edited February 11, 2018 by Razblood

[Major_Gilbear]

I would always recommend a white undercoat for a mostly-white model. Any other colour for the undercoat, and you're just making more work for yourself. :(

 

It's easy to tint the white for shading, but much harder to bring it back up to a smooth pure finish (especially as you'll thin your paints and that makes white cover even more poorly).

 

Also, along these lines, I would also suggest that your focus should be more on very gently and neatly shading the white, rather than trying to build it up from a shade colour or "reclaim" it from an all-over colour wash.

 

A white scheme perfectly doable, but you have to be careful, patient, and plan ahead as mistakes or operational errors are very tricky to correct neatly. I would therefore *strongly* recommend getting a few different test models and trying a few different undercoat colours and techniques to see what produces an effect you like.

I would also try a few more unconventional experiments too, like a Nihilakh Oxide wash with a dab of grey in it over a gloss white basecoat and then a matte seal afterwards before you fill in the other details on the model. Even if such experiments don't produce the results you want, you'll be amazed how useful they can still be, and often give you ideas for how to do something else with that technique.

 

Finally, if you still want some more advice or have more queries, you can post your tests up here and I'm sure that we can help you further. :)

[Aothaine]

Sounds good. I'll be picking up the white paints I'll be needing on the 9th of March hopefully. I'll get a good range of the paints as well to make sure that I can try all three methods. I also want to try building up from light blues. 

 

I'll favorite this post and add some of the test models when I start working on them.

 

 

 

I would also try a few more unconventional experiments too, like a Nihilakh Oxide wash with a dab of grey in it over a gloss white basecoat and then a matte seal afterwards before you fill in the other details on the model. Even if such experiments don't produce the results you want, you'll be amazed how useful they can still be, and often give you ideas for how to do something else with that technique.

 

Thank you for the suggestion. I had not even thought about using that.

[Major_Gilbear]

Well, another suggestion that could help you if you're army-painting, is to look into using oil washes.

 

Basically, over a gloss white (white with a coat of Polyurethane gloss varnish is best IMO), you apply a thin layer of Paynes Grey (or similar) oil paint. Once this is touch-dry, you dip a cotton bud in some white spirit, and carefully start to rub off the grey, leaving it in the recesses. You can remove more or less (to taste), and then seal it once it's fully dry again.

 

This is a pretty popular technique amongst the historical miniatures modellers, and there are consquently lots of YouTube videos on the subject. There are also various similar videos on using the technique with brown oil paint over ivory for painting Death Guard, should you prefer a Space Marine-based example.

 

For one model, it may not be much of a timesaver. For a squad, it's pretty effective. For an army, it's huge and it takes a lot of the chore out of painting white. :)

[Aothaine]

I will look into this method as well. Part of me wants the grueling 17 thin layers to get that beautiful white. But I know that painting 60+ miniatures like that is going to take a long time. So I'm totally down for quicker methods if they achieve the look I want.

 

Edit: Just curious. If you go with a gloss finish on the models is high-lighting the edges necessary? I was thinking of a finish kind of like what is on white cars. They don't have edge highlighting and just allow the light to provide the highlighting. Could this possibly work with a gloss finish on the white armor if I wanted the armor to end in pure white?

Edited February 12, 2018 by Aothaine

[Major_Gilbear]

I will look into this method as well. Part of me wants the grueling 17 thin layers to get that beautiful white. But I know that painting 60+ miniatures like that is going to take a long time. So I'm totally down for quicker methods if they achieve the look I want.

 

I did the whole many-many layers of white on a unit of 15 troops... And failed to finish them. Honestly, they are just so much work to get looking good with delicate and gradual shades, deeper recess shading, crisp highlights, etc., that doing an army like that is soul-destroyingly tedious. A model? Sure! A few models? Okay. A unit bigger than 5? Er... :(

 

Edit: Just curious. If you go with a gloss finish on the models is high-lighting the edges necessary? I was thinking of a finish kind of like what is on white cars. They don't have edge highlighting and just allow the light to provide the highlighting. Could this possibly work with a gloss finish on the white armor if I wanted the armor to end in pure white?

 

Yep, that's the whole point of the technique; the white edges are "pure" hard white, and then the rest gets wiped off back to varying levels to produce the shade. Also, there's nothing to stop you cleaning up a few edges later as well if you want to. :)

[Aothaine]

I look into the  Polyurethane gloss varnish and it is exactly what I want. But I don't know if I'm quite ready for everything that involved doing that. So for now I'll have to look into some other methods. Thank you very much for the ideas though!

[Redking]

I have found that Corax White is the perfect primer. It matches Ulthuan Grey almost perfectly. You can spray, then recess shade with the color of your choice. I used a very thin Russ Grey. Then clean up with Ulthuan Grey and start blending in White Scar until you have a strong edge highlight of White Scar.