Is Eshin Grey too dark for washes?

[TiguriusX]

I'm a newbie to hobby side and just painting up my first few guys.

I really like the dark I get from Eshin Grey but I tried some washes (Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil) and was not too impressed.

This photo is an agrax earthshade wash

My other test models of lighter grey (Dawnstone) look amazing with a wash of Agrax Earthshade.

Is there a suggestion for washing darker colors like Eshin Grey or is that just a limitation from the dark color I am using?

[Kastor Krieg]

I'd do pin washing instead of an overall coat and do it with a nicely diluted black ink / black paint with flow improver added. This way your Eshin Grey does not get stained towards the black too much and you still get the added depth.

[Grim Dog Studios]

If you choose to pinwash like Kastor Krieg suggested, a good trick is to spray the figure with gloss varnish which causes capillary action to pull the ink/paint into the lines of the model. A coat of matte afterwards will then dull the gloss and allow you to paint the figure again.

[Stoic Raptor]

I'd also recommend doing the wash after the highlights in that case - and use Nuln Oil Gloss instead.  It tends to flow into recesses better and doesn't darken the raised surfaces much, at all.

[Major_Gilbear]

The reason the washes aren't looking especially good over the Eshin Grey is that the colour of the Nuln Oil wash and the colour you're washing are too close, and the Agrax Earthshade simply isn't strong enough to give you any contrast. Whilst Nuln Oil is a nominally "black" wash, it isn't actually as dark as you think when going over dark colours. Similarly, Eshin Grey is a grey, but a very dark one that's really intended for little details or as a gentle highlight to black.

 

You might find that if you highlight the Eshin grey first, and then wash with a mix of half Nuln OIl with half Drakenhof Nightshade (to get a very dark blue), you might get enough contrast to give you a more striking result that reads as "black".

 

Something to keep in mind with washes is that as well as shading, they can also be used to even out (i.e., smooth) the steps between colours when you highlight. So if you highlight your colour fully, then wash carefully (maybe add some Lahmium medium to the wash, and apply two thin coats for control), and finally reapply the last highlight, you get a much better gradient of colour than if you just wash after the base coat and then highlight all the way up. If you do this, you may want to do a few colour tests first to make sure the end result is as you want, and remember that you can also mix washes together to get different colours (and therefore results) too.

[TiguriusX]

Thank you for all the great advice in here

 

I need to reconsider the paint scheme I am trying to develop and the paint I actually have in my inventory

[OnboardG1]

The other alternative is to (very carefully) apply something like Dark Reaper or Black into the recesses as a shadow rather than a wash. This is tricky but is a great exercise for improving brush control. 

 

You can see I've done that here on my Cataphractii to exaggerate the airbrush highlighting on the shoulder pads. I did these guys as a shading/highlighting test model and I think it came out fairly well:

 

http://i.imgur.com/Yg5Onhm.jpg

[Mileposter]

A little late to the party - but the color scheme I was originally working with for my Chapter is similar - Skavenblight Dinge rather than Eshin Grey, but they're close - and I achieved a good shadow with the washes by simply doing two coats of Nulan Oil after the Skavenblight. It darkened the Dinge paint to a near-black (I wanted a two tone black look) that was still colored enough to separate it from the black parts of the mini, but still had the shading of the wash. I used the Skavenblight as the edge color as well, but after the wash, so it gave the full highlight appearance without looking too stark against the darkened plates.

 

Worth noting that, even though that looked really good... I eventually changed color schemes too because A) it looked TOO close to Raven Guard Prime and tooooooo much basecoat work on a single marine model. Dunno if that works for what you're doing, but it worked for me!