Help with white models

[Pasquill]

Currently painting my second Eldar guardian squad in white and finding it very time consuming (I hate uneven coats). Initially I painted them with a base coat of codex grey then painted the armour skull white leaving the gaps in the armour codex grey. 5 coats on each of the armour section later and god knows how much time, I have a wonderful looking squad. So with the second squad I tried a different way. First I sprayed them skull white and gave them a wash, this failed, I may as well have painted them grey the way citadel sprays absorbs washes. So I tried spraying them in white again and painting the creases and gap in the armour grey in the hopes I would not have to use so many layers of white. However this turned out to take just as long.

Then I heard of the new paints Citadel where creating and read this....
"Citadel Base paints are high quality acrylic paints specially formulated for basecoating your Citadel miniatures quickly and easily. They are designed to give a smooth matte finish over black or white undercoats with a single layer."
"The answer to all my prays!" I thought and on the release day I was at my local GW and got me a ceramite white.

Well it is stronger than Skull white but still taking 3 coats to get the look I want.

So this is my plea to you good folks out there! Do you have any tips, hints or guides on painting pure white on a dark grey base coat with out using 3+ coats?

Some of you may think (or say) just get your head down and plod on with it and I would agree with you however I have little spare time and I intend to have more guardians squads in the future.

Below are some old images of the guardians.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...l/STA71883.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...uill/eldar.jpg

Cheers in advance!

[TheMav80]

http://fromthewarp.blogspot.com/2011...int-white.html

Here is a good tutorial from "From the Warp". I have been saving it to try out with my Tau, but have not gotten around to it yet. Maybe it will be of some help to you.

[Sauragnmon]

I've personally found that Bleached Bone is a real good prep for a white coat. So hit your plates with the bone, and then you should get good results with Ceramite White.

[Cthell]

I used to have pretty good results using fortress greys as an intermediate step between Codex and Skull; perhaps the modern equivilent? However, I did always need >2 layers of white to get a smooth effect

[CarbonCopy]

Initially I painted them with a base coat of codex grey

That's your problem. Start with a white primer. Once dry, paint a couple very thin coats of white. After that, wash or glaze any shading you want in a medium gray thinned appropriately (NOT BLACK!!!). Try to only hit the recesses and keep large expanses of armour plates clean. Touchup with with thinned white as needed.

See my "Brother CarbonCopy" link in my sig for an example.

[Pasquill]

Cheers all for the feed back! Will give all the above tips a bash.