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Hey guys, I've been trying forever to find a good blue ink substitute using citadel paints. I'm trying to give my GK's a nice light blue wash on their boltgun metal armour, but I haven't been able to get a good substitute made up that gives that nice subtle blue lighting. Any suggestions?

Go to and art store and ask for pen ink. Its a little pricey but highly concentrated so you can easily triple what you buy. They have them for artist refill pens. Try MichaelsArts and Crafts.

LBursley wrote:Go to and art store and ask for pen ink. Its a little pricey but highly concentrated so you can easily triple what you buy. They have them for artist refill pens. Try MichaelsArts and Crafts.

I went there today ( well the one in Canada atleast )

I looked for paint carousel ( dont have )
spray paint ( enamel??? )
washes ( dont have )
micro pigment pen ( no have! )
snow paste ( none till christmas?? )

Im so depressed.

Doh. Yeah I have a little knock off craft store which is like a gas station with too much stuff in it. But the carry all the evergreen plastics, card, sand...... and sakura micron pigment pens for $1.25 in all colors. I found the pens at Michaels but only in black.

@Harrison- If Michaoels doesn't carry them in CA just look for art stores around you and ask if they carry ink for refillable artist pens and what colors are available.

But if you are just trying to give a the GK's blue hues for the steel effect you could just buy Liquitex Glaze Medium and mix it with Regal blue about 8:1 medium/paint and be fine. if you want it to fall in the recesses like ink you could just make a wash using soapy water and your choice of blue.

Here's how my blue glaze turned out.

I was just working with some random pen ink. I thought it was fantastic, but I did not dilute and it was SUPER STRONG. Not a problem, and it actually canceled the red that I was trying to get rid of instantly. Just dilute the hell out of it because most of these inks are really that much more potent, and they will ruin your mini if you are not careful.

If you use it like a regular wash you will end up being quite surprised, it almost has it's own technique.

I have found that using washes is just about the best thing ever. I really don't like the look of metallic paints (i feel that they are waaaay too shiny, and really detract from a mini, esp when used on large areas) But after i throw some black wash on there, its like the metallic paint all of a sudden became a viable way to paint metal. And since i can't do NMM, i am very glad that my gaming group got the GW wash set. It works so well, that in just about a week, a group of 3 guys went through 3/4's of the black wash. Definitely worth the buy

Vallejo games colour still have the ink copies of all the GW inks.

I bought a brown one yesterday and it is indistinguishable from GW.

I have been using a mixture of water, liquitex matte medium, liquitex sap green ink, liquitex concentrated mars black, and higgins black ink because I need to buy some other black. Use acrylic artists ink not fountain pen ink. Any moisture will remove pen ink because it doesn't have any bonded in it. It is meant to be absorbed by paper not to stick to things. If you insist on using pen ink use a medium to get it to stick well.