Undercoat - black or white?

[Vamboozle]

It appears I've asked the wargaming equivalent of "how long is a piece of string?" Or "what's the in flight velocity of a swallow?"

I think Fig.ht is right - I going to have to try and see what suits......

[Techno]

From all the answer above, Vambo, it looks as though your best bet would be to have a bit of an experiment, and see which one suits your style of painting the best.
(Or which one you think gives the best effect.)......Fig.ht is quite right !

Rather than forking out on lots of different colour undercoats, I wonder if it would give you an idea if you sprayed a handful of figures white.....'Slap on' an appropriate colour as a 'pretend' undercoat, then paint on to the top of that.
It'll give you an idea, and you can always strip the paint from any figures you don't like.

Just an idea.

Cheers - Phil

[GordonY]

Black for the "if I miss a bit, its a shadow" effect followed  by a heavy wet brush of mid grey, so I can see what the feck I'm painting (plus colour lightening as others have mentioned.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

A friend undercoated his 28mm Russians red about 10 years ago for Warfare in The Age of Reason. Then for yonks they were still red with his basing applied. They looked really good.
Especially as the opposition was in green!
Now he's finished painting them. They look great, but we all miss the effect.

[Bodvoc]

Black undercoat with a dark brown drybrush over the top to bring out the detail, then paint as required.

[toxicpixie]

Black. Except when I use white/grey or a tan/brown or a red oxide. Sorry, depends on the project and what I want!

Black and a block paint is quick and gives a decent result, but can wash out/darken colours, white/grey works very well with a heavy wash (magic wash, Army Painter if you've money to burn!), a brown/tan I find looks really nice with a lighter "GW STYLE" (or Vallejo or...) wash (I use Reiksland Fleshshade usually) - got some Ottomans I want to get a decent photo of using that technique to enter in the comp!

[Roy]

Brown.

For me too.

I use Wilko Java Bean £1 paint tester to undercoat. Base and figure at the same time.

http://www.wilko.com/wilko-tester-pot-75ml-java-bean/invt/0283309

[Subedai]

Used to use black exclusively in all scales, now I only use it on all 6mm figures and it depends on what I am painting if larger. Sometimes it's black or white with a black magic wash over the top to fill in the creases and. The only thing is that I use enamel undecoat not acrylic.

[getagrip]

Black for me; every time.

[SerialLoser]

Black undercoat for shading, then drybrush colours over the top.

[Hertsblue]

Dare I mention that some people use light grey. I do for vehicles.

[jambo1]

I have used both black and white when undercoating, not at the same time!, but still undecided on whats best.

[ecka65]

Well, as a newcomer who has painted 1000's of 6mm but hasn't got off the mark yet with 10mm...

I use white washed with a homemede black ink wash.  Even with an excellent light and reading glasses I can't see what I'm trying to hit when I used black.  Plus yellow, and some reds (often banes for any painter) work beautifully over washed white and abysmally (for me anyway) over black.  One of my early discoveries painting small (back "in my day" I was 15mm DBA and 28mm everything else) I found I needed to hit the small guys with a few shades lighter and brighter than I'd use on a bigger fig.  Black makes that a pain.

[Atavus]

I favour a grey undercoat myself.  A very flexible base for any colour you might want to use over it.

[getagrip]

I favour a grey undercoat myself.  A very flexible base for any colour you might want to use over it.

How do you black line?

Having seen your painting I suspect you don't