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hey guys, just wanted to ask a few questions about painting, specifically washing, vehicles. In particualar, I have a stormraven which i have not yet finished as I'm not quite sure how. I don't have a lot of experience painting vehicles so any advice would be great. I have primed it using Army Painter Dragon Red, and filled in any details etc, in the same way as i would with any other mini. My question is how to actually wash it, since I have tried washing a rhino before and it ended up pooling in a lot of areas giving a horrible streaky finish on others. As I am wondering if it would be useful to spray the wash on, any tips would be great, thanks.

Use several layers of thinner wash. whenever I wash vehicles or larger flat areas I try to wash a single plane at a time, keeping it mildly tilted until it dries.

For example if I were washing the top of a Rhino I would place something small (like a couple of dice) under the tracks/body to get the wash to run in the direction I want the shading to be in.

Keeping it flat makes it pool in the middle of surfaces, putting it too steep gets stupid amounts of pooling and streaks. You can also clear up excess pooling by using tissue paper to draw out the excess.

I make my own wash for vehicles. I use a mix of something like 50% water, 25% paint and 25% matte medium. You can get the medium in any art supply store where they sell acrylic paint. I mix it all up in an old paint bottle so I have a lot of it. I use black over a shadow gray base coat for my IG tanks, and Dark Flesh over Bleached Bone for my CSM tanks.

You will have to test it out a bit before you dive into your tank, just base coat some old bitz you have laying around. If the color is too heavy, add water, if it's too light, add paint.

The matte medium is what makes the wash work though, it helps it flow into the corners and stay there and dry right without forming puddles, and it also kills any shine the paints might have to them.

Vallejo paints come in real handy for making your own washes, since they have the dropper bottles.

If you have an airbrush you can use it to give your vehicle a coat of wash.

Generally however, I've found that I like my vheicles alot more when I only was certain key areas.