Undercoat tips please - black or white?

[johnnyw]

Hi all,

My first post, but I've been lurking for a while

I've just moved to the "pure" side from WoC and Vampires and would appreciate some advice on undercoating. In the past, I've always undercoated black and then applied mid-tones and highlights, but I'm still very much a novice.

Foe HE do you recommend black or white undercoat, and how would you apply highlights/lowlights for the white cloth? I'd like to do the "standard" colour scheme as shown in the Army Book.

Thanks for any help.

John

[Sturen]

Welcome to the forum!

If your painting the standard color scheme then I'd recommend a white basecoat unless you have a lot of patience. It will probably take around 5-6 coats to get a clean white over black, even with foundations. However if you want to shade you white then you can use any basecoat and paint with a foundation and highlight and the time difference is slight.

I paint over black but it's personal preferance.

[Galengalad]

Same here - I prefer highlighting to shading of white, I've also found that armor looks better if done over black undercoat.
Highlighting is generally codex grey-fortress grey-scull white. You can always make mixtures of these colours to make a smooth changes of colour - it all depends on your patience.
Another reason for black undercoat is that if you leave some unpainted places they'll look like a shade, and not like elf's underwear

[Aethyr]

Depends what your painting. Call me stupid, but ive started undercoating my armored elves with a Silver(NOT CHROME!) can. From there its as simple as colouring in the parts that arent metal and I have had no issues so far. for my more clothy soldiers I go with a grey spraypak and work from there.

In the past I went from black, which can be good in terms of armor, looking like shadow in the crevices and what not.

[Baragash]

I always use a black undercoat...

This model was done over a black undercoat:



One coat of Codex Grey, one coat of Fortress Grey and IIRC 4 coats of Skull White with each coat effectively being a highlight by not going as far into the recesses. It's pretty quick, and it's how I'll be doing the small amount of white on my WHF HE.

[SpellArcher]

I reckon if you want a bright look, undercoating white is easier.

Like many others though, I undercoat black.

There's nothing pure about my High Elves!

[Valeli]

I primed my army white when I started, and wish I could take that back and have it done in black.

White has it's pluses, but I ended up doing my army with a lot of drybrushing and highlighting. So I had to go back over the white to paint the armor bits black anyways, then siver, etc. And with white, if you miss any spots, it's easy to tell afterwards (missing little tiny spots, i mean. Which is pretty easy to happen in certain areas if you're painting your models assembled - with black primer, it's much easier to gloss over that and have it kind of look like shading).

The "you need 6 coats of white on black" thing is exagerated a bit as well, imo. You can get a grey foundation paint to cover black pretty easily, and then it's not that hard to highlight it up to white from there, with succesively lighter shades of gray in the recessed areas.

White is easier to get crisp colors on though, and it does let you do it with less coats of paint. So if you're a skilled painter (or simply an average-slightly above average painter with a lot of time and patience who wants to paint to a high standard), you can probably make good use of it as a base coat.

I just came back to my high elves (and this site) after a few months absence, and have been annoyed by my own primer choice lately, like I said.

[saintjon]

I always prime grey for my high elves, except when I did my phoenix guard, who I primed white (for that ethereal 4+ ward save "glow").

Prime grey, apply black wash for the best of both worlds, cheers.

[Iceman]

i think i will always prime black, the shadow effect that it gives instantly easily outweights the extra layers you have to do. and since my models dont have any white anyway except for extreme higlights ive never had a problem.

[Angel]

I tried white when I started my High Elves, but I found out that you get the same look from black, it just takes less time to paint it. So I'm using black all the way now

[johnnyw]

Thanks for the help everyone, it looks like black is the way to go.

John

[Citizen Militia]

I primed white for the first few units back when I built my army 6/7 years ago. Did so on the advice of the G/W staff and kinda regretted it, then primed black for my next couple of units and found it easier to get the shading. Though you do have to work it up alot more with lots of coats I found

I will certainly use black when I start re-ammassing my army hopefully late this year

[Evenstine]

If you are going to use metalics then prime black, plus you get a tone of shading for very little effort. There is way too much armor in most HE miniatures. If you are going to use NMM or your mini does not have much armor then prime white. What ever you do make sure you have shading down packed before you prime white ( although ).

I did my HE with black primer, getting white as other have said is not that big a problem. Simply cover the black in some mid tone, which has the hues that you are looking for, then work up to white or just of white, I do this in four layer with one final one in pure white. But you can get off white in three layer if you are not too fussed.

On the other hand I did my chaos daemons with white undercoat. This worked fine as I could get brighter and more vibrant colors. And cause they did not have any armor at all (which i usually do in metalics, cause I am not that great at NMM, and dry-brushing is easier).

Here are some of my high elves ( http://s179.photobucket.com/albums/w289/evenstine/ ), have not had time to put up my demons. And when I do i will probably do it some where else.

Final piece of advice pick two spear elves, prime one white the other black. Then paint them. Consider the end results, how long it took you, how much time you want to invest, how many miniatures you have to paint, and to what standard you want your army to be (or to what standard you will be satisfied with we all want our armies to be life like or better). Then decide. WHAT EVER YOU DO DONT PRIME A WHOLE ARMY UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY SURE OF WHAT YOU ARE DOING.

Good luck.