Oil washes

[Marshal Vespasian]

I am using then for white and metal parts, but has any of you fraters found success in oil washing our black armour for weathering/Definition?

[Imren]

Yes, I'm quite happy using burnt sienna as dust effects on my 30k alpha legion:

 

[Imren]

For black armour I'd recommend you to use a pale khaki oilwash (mix in white and/or yellow in earthly brown tones such as burnt umber or raw umber) combined with desert themed bases. The light colour oilwash combined dark coloured armour (Raven guard, Iron hands, Night lords etc) gives a nice contrast and definition of the armour panels and looks quite "realistic" with desert bases. I did my deathwatch kill team this way and I was happy with the result (don't have pics yet of them).

[Marshal Vespasian]

I am doing City bases so maybe more of a light grey.

 

Do you wash the model All over with the oil and then do a bit of pigments on the leg or how does it work?

[Imren]

This is the procedure I use, bear in mind that I use airbrush for priming, preshading/prehighlighting, applying base colours and all the varnishing steps below.

1. Prime, preshade/prehighlight and apply base colours on your model.
2. Thin gloss varnish 1:1 with thinner and apply two thin coats.
3. Do your decal work (I use Micro Sol and Micro Set for this).
4. Again thin gloss varnish 1:1 with thinner and apply one thin coat just over over the decals.
5. Do all detail work (eye lenses, metal work, pouches, weapons etc)
6. Do your weathering (scratches, pitting, edges with worn off paint etc)
7. Heavily dilute the oilpaint you want to use in white spirit (I prefer artists' odourless spirit) and apply in the recesses with a round small synthetic detail brush (size 0-ish, you don't want to use your fancy kolinsky brushes for this, you want a fine tipped synthetic one as the spirit will ruin the sable hair bristles and make them brittle which wears off the fine tip faster). Its difficult to tell the ratio since oilpaint is like a paste, but you want the resulting mixture to be fluid like a liquid (like skimmed milk).
8. Wait around a half an hour to an hour (if you batch paint 5-10 infantry models, you won't need to wait when you come back to the first one in the batch) and then with the same brush using just clean spirit clean off the excesses and any pooling. You could use q-tips/cotton buds here but they will leave cotton fiber residues on the model that you don't want there when doing the next stages.
9. Wait 5-6 hours for the oilpaint to fully dry (I recommend to wait overnight for this)
10. Lock in the model with a final varnish mixture of one of the two below options:
    • For models were metallics are prevalent colours: mix gloss varnish and matt varnish to a 3:1 ratio before thinning. This dulls down the metallic sheen less than regular satin varnishes.
    • For models were non-metallics are the prevalent colours: mix gloss varnish and matt varnish to a 1:3 ration before thinning, this removes the sheen off the flat colour areas without removeing the sheen off the metallics too much (bolters, trims etc).
11. Attach (I pin my models with 1 mm brass wire) your model to your ready made base (at this stage you want your base done including final varnishing).
12. Using a ruined old small brush apply pigment powder around the feet (I do this after varnishing otherwise the dusty look will be ruined by the varnish coat, the mixed in matt varnish in the final varnish coat allows the pigments to adhere sufficiently to stay in place) and shake off the excess pigment not adhering leaving a thin pigment coat looking like dust around the feet.