Undercoat discussion?

[Monkey King]

So, this is kind of a 2 part topic.

The first part is what colour undercoat do you use? I am currently using Black, but I do dislike black a lot at the moment and was wondering if anyone used white as an undercoat or maybe another colour?

For the next armies I'm doing I'm going to look at a light brown undercoat then a spray of white air gunned from above. That way most colours I put on will be almost a wash and the brown will already have my shadowed colours and from there I should only need to wet blend my highlight colour in?

What do you guys think? and yeah, what undercoat do you guys use at the moment?

[Lazarus]

I always go with black or white. It all depends on what your base color is going to be. So blues and green and dark colors i go black. lights like white, yellow red and so on i go white.

It depends on your paint process. i have a good few layers of paint before i get to my final highlight. I normally base spray then use my base color/foundation then a wash layer then base color/foundation again then highlights. So color of base may not matter at all with how i paint but i still do white for light and black for dark's

[Sectiplave]

I use GW black undercoat, I spray it on from about a meter away in an sheltered area. It uses quite a bit of spray but it goes on super thin and smooth, ideal if you are working with fine detailed models.

I found the white undercoat was almost textured, it has a slightly powdery finish which is kinda cool on vehicles but not good for fine details.

Never used any other spray cans, but I highly recommend spraying from as much distance as possible, you will go through more spray cans though

[Derick]

I tend to use white undercoat to bring up the colours particularly Reds and Yellows.
Yes, the white leaves a textured coat, but when your doing mass troops like skaven ...

The GW Foundation paints are very good for getting some good colour out of the topcoats too. Mix it really thin, almost a wash, if you want to keep detail.

[juiced]

i use both in much the same way as Laz......but have seen tutiorials on the web where they have undercoated with a grey primer then a base colour.
especially if using an airbrush.
here is a crimson fist tutioral where the guy may have some idea simular to yours about using spray and shadowing. although he is using an airbrush
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tvtgIGHPoM

[Big D]

Depends what i am painting generally. My vamps I undercoated white due to them using pre-dominatly lighter colors (bone, flesh etc...). My Dwarves I undercoat black, due to the fact they are all armour and beard.

Never had any problems with GW black, have tried a few others which work ok as long as you get flat black, not matt. With white, I did have the powdery problem a couple of years agos in the height of a really hot summer where the paint was starting to dry before it made contact, aside from that haven't had any problems with GW white either. Never really found a good, cheap substitute for it though.

[Monkey King]

I'm painting Dwarfs at the moment as well, but I find the only thing that needs to be black is the armour but I've undercoated the whole thing black and if the flesh doesn't go on properly, the black kind of shines through making the model look bruised or dirty, which isn't what I'm aiming for.

@Juiced: That's close to what I was aiming for, although he adds highlights with his airbrush, where as what I'm aiming for is to do is have my darker colour on, then airbrush on white at that 45 degree angle and then wash colours on the model. The darker colour will be in the recesses and so with a washed or glazed colour over top the white it will be darker in the recesses which is what I'm doing at the moment. I just wondering if anyone else did anything similar or thinks I'm completely bonkers mad with that idea?

[juiced]

after posting that last night i went through alot more of his tutorials, there is another one for death guard where he go's quite light with his highlights then sprays on washes only to remove the areas he wants to highlight with a makeup sponge.
although i don't think that's what you are trying to do .... it could look interesting,your idea. but i would test it first as the wash would look very different over the white comperred to the brown.
some colours may not even show up on the brown

[Monkey King]

It depends on how light the brown is I think? Thinking about it, it's like the 'dipping' technique backwards.

I saw one tutorial of a guy doing an orc Boy for 40K and he used just straight washes, though his first wash was Devlen Mud. Oh well, old models, here I come to test paint on you I suppose....