Good Wash for metallic colors?

[Black Templar 307th Comp.]

Title pretty much says it all. B&C you haven't steered me wrong yet. What's a good wash for metallics, such as bolters, chainswords et al. I mostly use shining gold, boltgun metal and mithril silver for my bolters, my weapons and the eagles and such on my armor.

[henrywalker]

what effet do you want? which mettaic is it over, sepia is good to shade gold, red for bronze, black and sometimes blue for silver.

[Lorenzen]

dont use "normal" washes..

 

they are made using a matt medium as the base, mix your own using either a gloss medium (gloss varnish works well enough) distilled water and black acrylic ink. essentially you thin the ink down using distilled water then add the gloss varnish as it helps it flow into all the cracks better.

 

this is for silvers.. if you look through my fire angel thread you can see a few different examples of what different things do when stuck over a silver base.

[Seahawk]

Gold - Devlan Mud or Badab Black.

 

Silver - Badab Black or any other for "weird" steel.

 

 

That's just what I do anyway.

[Grotsmasha]

Using GW colours I use Badab black for straight shading on Boltgun/Chainmail/Mithril, or Gryphonne Sepia/Ogren Flesh for dirtied silvers, Golds, Bronzes.

 

Cheers,

Jono

[Subtle Discord]

Personally I prefer Gryphonne Sepia on gold for a nice rich colour. Out of the bottle it's light and will give a bright Gold, but you'll need a few layers - all the better to blend and enhance the effect. Add ~10 drops of Brown ink to keep it 'warm' and intensify the effect, and you can get away with one layer.

 

Devlan Mud is great to make both Gold and Silver dirty and tarnished. If that's what you want, that's great, but I prefer the Orange/Brown of Sepia over the Black/Brown of Devlan Mud.

[doshin]

Washing metals isn't necessary if you use the right paints.

 

Step 1. Throw away your acrylic metals.

 

Step 2. Replace them with Humbrol polished steel and other polished metal colors.

 

Step 3. Basecoat in black.

 

Step 4. At the very end after everything else dry brush the pigment from the Humbrol polished steel onto the black. When it dries you literally polish the metal with a q tip. It is actual metal and will buff up just like a fine metal.

 

...or you could spend 12 hours per model doing eyelash highlights to achieve a lackluster version of the same effect. Humbrol metals look better than what most NMM painters can pull off.

[Warbringer]

I like using Blue and Purple washes on my Flamers and assault cannons with some Black washes to heat stain them

 

Generally i use sepia for everything else and works out pretty good IMO!

[Dosjetka]

In my mind, a thin wash of Badab Black/Nuln Oil over metallics goes a long way :lol:

 

Ludovic

[Badaab]

What standard are we painting these models to?

If you're after something to provide adequate shading, I'd say that the above suggestions of a black ink over silver and a brown ink over gold work well. However, if you're aiming for a more weathered or matte look to your metals, you might want to try glazing them with some standard paint. I've been experimenting with this, and while I don't have anything that's board friendly to show, you can often get some nice results by glazing with complimentary colors to add some depth and variety (ie a reddish brown like the old GW Dark Flesh and a yellow green like P3's Traitor Green).

Something else I've been experimenting with is adding more depth whilst basecoating- you might try cutting your silver with a medium grey tone- the new GW color Skavenblight Dinge is fast becoming a favorite for this. My Blood Angel Vanguard Vet (currently WIP) has this worked into the silver of the power sword, as I didn't want to overwhelm a model with so much bright silver... however, I liked the effect so much I'll likely be using it on the armor of my Grey Knights.