Inks, washes, shades and glazes? Their differences are subtle, but using them in the right place can give great looking effects on your miniatures; this post is in response to a request regarding to alternatives to inks due to their tendency to rub off.
An Ink from the old GW paint range:
Inks are now available from most art stores and some miniatures paint companies, this Daler Rowley ink I used for my very fast painted 20 minute plaguebearers, not a bad result for just a wash over a white undercoat:
Inks tend to be thicker than the washes / shades that GW now produces, inks tint the surface as well as collect in recesses. Inks are used to shade a model, or change the hue of an area on the model; here are some alternative ways to achieve these effects:
Glazes
Well, they're slow - painting larger areas with them can takes ages! (Unless you take some good blending shortcuts - possibly a future post?)
However, done right they can give those shifts in colour even better and smoother than inks!
How to Glaze:
The Medium Way: Paint + mix in equal amounts of water and GW lahmian medium - for getting the right consistency, see the hand test for glazes here: (http://equinoxpainting.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/handy-painting.html)
- Then just go ahead and apply the thinned paint in layers on the part of the model you want tinted that colour - eventually the colour builds up softly without any complex technique - just time consuming.
Slightly Less Smooth But Much Faster Glaze Method:
The Water Way: Paint + water - for getting the right consistency, see the hand test for glazes here: (http://equinoxpainting.blogspot.com.au/2014/07/handy-painting.html)
And for water glazes i apply in a slightly different way - more feathering as shown in this video: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=484340208336878
Make Your Own Shading Liquids
Essentially the same as for a medium glaze, with the exception that instead of medium using this stuff:
From there, add more or less water, more water will make a thinner mix - a wash to mostly just affect the recesses, whilst less will make an ink which will tint the surface of the model more as well as shade the recesses.
Model's flesh has been washed purple twice:
Lines
Alternatively, if the whole runny paint thing just isnt for you, theres always suing lines to paint in the darkest lines of your model, for these fire warrior legs i used a dark blue with black pain to give the less smooth crisper highlights between armour plates.
This can be a tricky technique requiring more brush control than inks or shades - but still doable with a bit of patience.
This helps a lot, so if I wanted to get the same shading qualities of ink with out worrying about it running off I should do a glaze of some sort?
ReplyDeleteNow for my next question: How should I go about painting hair? In particular, gingery style hair/beards? I ask because my highlander's heads will be here soon and they be very hairy lads indeed
Well, inks don't particularly rub off, they're not much more likely to come off than most other acrylic paints, besides, if you used varnish all paints would be locked in equally.
ReplyDeleteI got the feeling that with this information you would still feel better using an alternative,
in which case, it depends what you were planning to use the ink for.
If it's to pick out details by making the thin paint gather in recesses; well then you may want a wash. Army Painter, Games Workshop and Vallejho I believe all sell varieties of washes premade. Or you can make you own as described under the 'Make Your Own Shading Liquids' heading.
If the ink was to make shifts in colour (like in my Flamer of Tzeentch), the best alternative would be a glaze. The difference being there isn't any flow improver added. Unlike for washing / shading, I'd recommend using your own glazes instead of ready made ones - you can see the colours of glazes and how I used them in the Facebook video link above.
For my highlanders, I gave them ginger hair, it's important to give them slightly different colours of hair or it can end up looking like a Weasley family reunion.
ReplyDeleteI basecoated the hair a mix of Squig Orange with a tiny bit of Gorthor Brown. Then used either Agrax Earthshade, Sepharim Sepia, Carronburg Crimson or a wash made from Rhinox hide paint,
mixing up which wash I used between models gave variety.
I then highlighted with a mix of Squig Orange with a small bit of Screaming Skull added. I then added some more Screaming Skull to the mix to highlight further just some of the models - again for variety. I actually kept the hair highlighting very low on my models so they looked natural as supposed to the bright red hair of this Wych.
http://www.dakkadakka.com/s/i/at/at2/2014/7/18/e6dc0f6a8371408d038dd8b4e7d81ee4_57973.png
The same hair painting principle could be applied to any colour hair, i.e. For brown hair, it could be Gorthor Brown instead of Squig Orange with the same rest of the process.
Most models have raised lines on the sculpt for the hair, so it's easy to know what lines to highlight allong. If there aren't these strands sculpted in you can paint your own lines following the direction of the hair.
Dude, you blow me away with your knowledge, the only thing my dad (Who used to do a lot of painting) advised when I asked was to make darn sure I did the skin first, to avoid flesh on beard mishaps
ReplyDelete