Painting High Elf White

I used a combination of white and Vallejo grey undercoat, airbrushing the grey onto the shield and robes. I was a bit nervous about how that would work as I am an airbrush newb, but it seems to have worked.

The sequence for the white is as follows.

1. Base coat with Astronomican Grey.

2. Base coat with Ulthuan Grey. This will need several coats and you don’t need to really focus on the recesses at all. Just get a nice solid coat on the majority of the robe.

3.Create a wash of 50/50 Lamian Medium and  Thunderhawk Blue. Paint it into the recess. Don’t just splash on a wash over the whole robe.

4. Highlight with Ulthuan and Thunderhawk (70/30ish) cleaning up the places where the wash may have gotten out of place and establishing the first blend towards the top of the fold.

5. HL with Ulthuan, focusing on the tops third of the folds and all solid flat areas.

6. Mix up 50/50 Ulthuan and Skull White, moving further up the folds towards the highest spot.

7. Pure white on the highest spots and corners.

It is worth mentioning that I do thin the paint with both water and Vallejo Glaze Medium. This keeps the white from becoming too chalky and allows for a greater working time. White seems to dry out on the palette so much faster than the other colors. Using the Glaze Medium just makes working with white a bit friendlier.

I also used this technique on the crewmen for the Bolt Thrower. By using white as the HL rather than the base, it provides a bit of depth. You could replace Thunderhawk with any dark grey if that look is not working for you.