Painting white figures

Tools, Techniques, and Reference Materials Painting and airbrushing
1

…and other models for that matter! [:D]

I’m currently participating in the Race Car Group Build, and want to use the Tamiya driver and co-driver figures in my car. Unfortunately, the Lancia racing overalls of the period are white.

As such, some advice on how to go about shading/highlighting white would be much appreciated. My thoughts at the moment are to make the base colour a very light grey and highlight with white, or to shade a white base with a very light blue.

Some tried-and-tested methods would be quite handy [;)]

Thanks

2

I’m sure no expert on shading or highlighting, I can barely spell them without messing up. I think your thought to start with a very light gray and highlight with white may be on track though. If you think about how you would see them in real life, the only places that would be truly white would be the highlights. Everything else would be shades of gray.

3

thanks MC, I hadn’t thought of looking at it as shades of grey. that makes sense, let’s see if I can pull it off [:D]

4

Let me know how it works out. I think you are on the right track.

5

I believe that it was Shep Paine that once said that all white and all black figures were the hardest to paint realisticly. I would make the suggestion that you slightly darken your white base coat, then darken that for your crevices and use pure white for high lights. I’ve done that with blacks (only reversing the process) and I’ve been satisfied with the results.

6

I concur. I’ve used light grey instead of white because using pure white just looks too unrealistic. Light grey is ALMOST like white but just seems more true to the original. By that I mean it seems to work better when you start to apply shadows and highlights and it just looks more life-like than using pure white.

Eric