Painting White Uniforms

Some wargamers find painting white a challenge, in painting our own 7th Line Infantry, we opted for an ivory off-white, to complement the African skin tones of the troops, and to create a nice contrast with pure white crossbelts and white bearskins.

We asked our old friend Mark Naylor, a well known commission painter in the North East of England to paint some test figures, to see how he approached the task, these are the results:

As you can see, Mark has taken a different approach, using a grey-white gradient (rather than our ivory-white gradient). He’s also used blacklining as a technique to differentiate between different elements of the uniform - particularly when white elements overlap.

He’s also painted the figures with lighter skin tones, which was really helpful in bringing out some of the facial features.

For our figures we basecoated in Valllejo grey primer, followed by a white zenithal highlight. Base layer was Vallejo Model Air Sand (Ivory), followed by Vallejo Model Air White. After this was dry we used a careful application of GW Seraphim Sepia wash. Crossbelts and bearskin had a base layer of GW Ulthuan Grey, followed by GW Skull White. You can see this combination below on our test Sapeur: