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After seeing someone “stain” metallic paints using the citadel washes I was inspired to do a test of the effects each wash has on chainmail. So I took 8 slugga arms from my bits box, base coated with foundation astronomican grey then just painted on the chainmail. After this I washed each of the 8 slugga’s with one of the washes and let it dry before photographing them individually and washing again, and again.

For the benefit of you dakkites I photographed after each layer of wash

Photo's are up at last
as you can see Gryphonne sepia, Thrakka Green, Ogryn Flesh, Leviathan Purple and Asurman blue give the best results when it comes to tinting metals. Baal Red is mediocre at tinting as it doesnt cover that well and gives a pinky red rather than a rich orangey red, Badab Black seems to only be good for shading and Devlan Mud while good for weathering doesnt really work that well for tinting.

Interesting, I shall keep that one in mind, I am a real wash nut.
FYI: you only have to basecoat for the golds.
Excellent Work 10/10

Great post, the Badab Black, Devlan Mud and Gryphonne(?) are great washes for my purposes. I gave up on GW washes years back, but these have decent results I must say.

~ Tael.

Excellent post. Now I dont have to guess what the tints will look like when I wash my metallics. I dont know if I agree with your conclusions on badab black, it does tint, just it tints black so obviously the metal will look shaded as well.

I've been doing this to add some color to my necrons. The Baal red is definately pinky, but if you do two washes, then follow with the Devlan Mud or Gryphonne Sepia, it warms up slightly and reds out.

Also works great to make beautiful power weapons: Base with Boltgun, highlight with Chainmail, final edge with Skull White, then wash two to three times to tint. Did my banshee's swords like that with Asurman Blue and they look significantly better than hard-edging or drybrushing.

@ Tael, how could you have given up on them years ago when the washes only came out June/July last year? Unless you mean the inks?

Wow!

Thanks for this - a lot!

Badab Black and/or Gryphonne Sepia over Chainmail will work very nicely for what I've got planned!

Again, thank you!

I've been singing the praise of Gryphonne Sepia for some time now as a gold alternative. Used over chainmail or mithril silver it works wonderfully in just a few coats depending on the look you are going for and really maximizes your control over the paint.

A great test thread corpse. A little clearer photos and a compilation of them all would be a great help though for something like this.

Even for experienced painters, this is a great thread to see these effects. In the past, I have used inks on metallics with great success, most notably Red Ink which looks pretty badass with two coats of it. Thanks for taking the time to do this (and fairly thorough too!).

hey im starting an ork army and this is quite usefull for their weapons and might look cool on the armor ghazkull

gennadius: ogryn flesh and gryphonne sepia would be best for indicating different types of metals the orks have just looted and melted down to make weapons and armour. although on my orks i have washed some of the weapons with thrakka green to make them more orky

anticitizen: Thank you for the compliments sadly the only ink i own currently is the brown ink as that is the only ink i bought before i took a break from warhammer, when i rejoined the hobby they no longer stocked inks at my local GW

grey_death: again thanks for the kind words i will deffinatly take your advice on board next time i work on a tutorial (soon by the way once my camera has new batteries ill be doing on how to make gore, as seen on my skagrod da butcha if anyone saw that).

Alpharius: dont forget to post whatever this mysterious project is on dakka, im keen to see your results.

Krellnus: i believe he does mean inks, unless he is a timetraveller from the future

Gavin Thorne: two baal red and a gryphonne sepia gives a reddy red you say? sounds very interesting. as does your power weapon method (deffinatly going to try that on some of my rainbow warriors)

Elnicko: for my purposes tinting means colouring the entire object a certain colour, badab black shaded the recesses but only minorly tinted the rest of the metal. so thats how i reached my conclusions on badab black although obviously your point of veiw is equally as valid

Shas'El Tael: yes gryphonne is the correct seplling if by washes you meant inks then did you try watering them down and using a drop of soap to ease surface tensions? not that it really matters anymore, that is unless you have some inks stashed away somewher

Krellnus: i basecoated because as you can see in the pictures i didnt prime and foundations adhere to raw plastic better than standard paints, again thank you

And lastly a big thank you to legoburner for his rapid responce and sebsequent fixing of the attachment issues on this section of the forums

Krellnus wrote:@ Tael, how could you have given up on them years ago when the washes only came out June/July last year? Unless you mean the inks?

corpsesarefun wrote:Krellnus: i believe he does mean inks, unless he is a timetraveller from the future

GW did make washes many years ago before the inks and before the current washes. I still have some of them. The ones I still have, and this is how they are labeled on the bottles, are blue wash, red wash, orange wash, yellow wash, orc flesh wash, purple wash, flesh wash, armour wash, and brown wash. I'm not sure if there were others or not. So yeah, it's possible that he does actually mean he gave up on GW washes many years ago.

Lord_Mortis wrote:

Krellnus wrote:@ Tael, how could you have given up on them years ago when the washes only came out June/July last year? Unless you mean the inks?

corpsesarefun wrote:Krellnus: i believe he does mean inks, unless he is a timetraveller from the future

GW did make washes many years ago before the inks and before the current washes. I still have some of them. The ones I still have, and this is how they are labeled on the bottles, are blue wash, red wash, orange wash, yellow wash, orc flesh wash, purple wash, flesh wash, armour wash, and brown wash. I'm not sure if there were others or not. So yeah, it's possible that he does actually mean he gave up on GW washes many years ago.

thanks for clearing that up Lord_Mortis

i presume that
blue wash=asurman blue
red wash=baal red
yellow wash=gryphonne sepia
orc flesh wash=thrakka green
purple wash=leviathan purple
flesh wash=ogryn flesh
armour wash=badab black
brown wash=delvan mud
orange wash i cant see an equivilent

or have they completely reinvented the washes for the new range?

10/10 nice work man.

Don't forget that you can mix the washes and apply different washes on top of another. My basic mix for worn metal is one wash of ogryn followed by mud wash. This done over bolt gun gives you nice darkened and worn metal like this ork has.

Wow man nice ork.

corpsesarefun wrote:

Lord_Mortis wrote:

Krellnus wrote:@ Tael, how could you have given up on them years ago when the washes only came out June/July last year? Unless you mean the inks?

corpsesarefun wrote:Krellnus: i believe he does mean inks, unless he is a timetraveller from the future

GW did make washes many years ago before the inks and before the current washes. I still have some of them. The ones I still have, and this is how they are labeled on the bottles, are blue wash, red wash, orange wash, yellow wash, orc flesh wash, purple wash, flesh wash, armour wash, and brown wash. I'm not sure if there were others or not. So yeah, it's possible that he does actually mean he gave up on GW washes many years ago.

thanks for clearing that up Lord_Mortis

i presume that
blue wash=asurman blue
red wash=baal red
yellow wash=gryphonne sepia
orc flesh wash=thrakka green
purple wash=leviathan purple
flesh wash=ogryn flesh
armour wash=badab black
brown wash=delvan mud
orange wash i cant see an equivilent

or have they completely reinvented the washes for the new range?

The old GW washes were used more for shading. They worked best when applied over the same color and filled in recesses, etc. They were more of a watered down ink wash. They were watery and thin and it was often difficult to get them to transition evenly or stay where you put them, and often ended up blotchey because they had surface tension issues. For all that, they were still quite useful and I still use several of them for quick shading, and for thinning paints of the same color. Inks are really just darker concentrated versions of the old washes and are used mostly for shading. The new washes are best over white, or light neutral colors and can be used to tint as well as shade, thought they do not shade as well over the same color without several coats. They are thicker and go on more like an even glaze than the washes or inks did, so it is easier to control where it goes and how evenly it is applied. In fact I remember people mixing the GW glaze medium and the washes to get an effect similar to the current line of washes.

There was also a black wash that really darkend things up if you wanted them to look gritty. Armor wash was more watered down to fall into recesses of platemail and chainmail better.

Meph

That Thrakka Green wash (3 layers) looks like it might almost be a good way to paint Ork skin, maybe with a different base coat?

What do you think?

I'm really liking the Ogryn Flesh 2nd coat. Thanx for testing and sharing!

Alpharius wrote:That Thrakka Green wash (3 layers) looks like it might almost be a good way to paint Ork skin, maybe with a different base coat?

What do you think?

base with something like tin bitz with three layers of thrakka ?
ill try it once the camera is fixed (sadly its not working at the moment )

corpsesarefun wrote:

Alpharius wrote:That Thrakka Green wash (3 layers) looks like it might almost be a good way to paint Ork skin, maybe with a different base coat?

What do you think?

base with something like tin bitz with three layers of thrakka ?
ill try it once the camera is fixed (sadly its not working at the moment )

That would be great - and much appreciated!

I think that the delvan mud second layer its good for the ork gunz

ok it appears tin bitz is too dark...
im trying again with dwarf bronze and burnished gold

corpsesarefun wrote:ok it appears tin bitz is too dark...
im trying again with dwarf bronze and burnished gold

Eventhough you're probably right, could you post pics of all your samples, just so we can see what they all look like?

And again, thanks!

Excellent thread sir! A definite resource.

Alpharius wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:ok it appears tin bitz is too dark...
im trying again with dwarf bronze and burnished gold

Eventhough you're probably right, could you post pics of all your samples, just so we can see what they all look like?

And again, thanks!

i will
im just trying the other two then photographing them all, burnished gold has VERY poor coverage by the way...

corpsesarefun wrote:burnished gold has VERY poor coverage by the way...

Yeah, that is why people are trying to find valid alternatives, for example the grey_death's sepia tip. Vallejo's yellow metallics have better coverage than GW's.

This is a longshot, but it is to the OP. I don't have the washes w/ me personally, but I'd do it if I could. Is there anyway you can show us Shining Gold w/ those washes applied as well? I'd highly thank you in advance and depending on the results... You may have helped me w/ my paint scheme.

-J.

I would love to alazahr but my camera is sadly broken
and i dont actually own shining gold, its the only metallic i dont own.
once my camera is fixed ill buy some asap and do the tests for you though
i will also post the ork skin metallic tests i did for alpharius (burnished gold, dwarf bronze and tin bitz with 3 washes of thrakka green).
And in a new thread ill post my gore tutorial that i have typed up but still need to take photo's for (once more, damn my camera!)