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Heya folks,

I've finaly decided to jump back into 40k after a 6 or so years break and have decided to go with the Grey Knights as my first project, living quite abit away from the closest GW store I'm unable to talk to more experienced painters to gather insight and tips on how to paint specific miniatures, so Im wondering if anyone here would mind shareing some tips on painting the grey knights and how these new washes work, I'm looking to keep the grey knights as there default scheme as I don't feel quite confident enough to go for my own just yet, I still remember the basic techniques includeing drybrushing, edge highlighting and wet blending. Any advice would be hugely appreciated and a quick run down on washes and how to use them!

Thanks a bunch guys! Hopefully I'll get the first painted by the weekend and I'll post a pic or two up for your entertainment:p!

Kall

I am not an expert painter by any means but I did just paint 2000 pts of GK's to what I think is a slightly higher than TT quality. Check my GK gallery for some pics.

I used a black primer and then just dry brushed 1 coat of boltgun metal on. I used the asurmen blue wash from GW. That wash is VERY VERY blue and does require some thinning down.

As above

you can get away with either black + drybrushed boltgun, or prime -> spray boltgun -> drybrush mithril

you will probably want a gold or copper secondary color for the lettering, a black wash to put into the lettering so any extra paint that gets between the letters gets drown out, and black or red for the weapons and some misc details

If you have a michaels nearby, i suggest looking at the line of transparent paints for airbrushes that they have, is it much thinner than wash so you will need a coat or two, but is less finicky about how thick you put it on because of this. and you can do a whole coat very quickly with a big brush.
I use the red ,purple and green as accents for my knights depending on what weapon they are carrying

Thanks alot for the replies guys!! As for these washes, how do I exactly use them? Do I apply an even coat all over the mini or do I just try to bring out the shadows and recesses with it, I'm not even sure if I'm to soak the brush in the wash or only use a little. I apologise for this I'm totaly new to these washes!

Kall

Depends on preference you might say. If you use it straight out of the pot I would say hit only the recesses. I thinned mine down and dipped the whole model in after doing the silver drybrush. As I mentioned, I do not claim to be an expert painter!

Ahhh I see, thanks Pdawg, is it just a case of adding water or specificly a thinner? Just checked out your gallery, very nice. So far I'm thinking black primer, heavy drybrush boltgun and hit them with the blue wash and maybe mithril highlights, I'll most likely use red for the bolter and so on with shineing gold for the details and maybe regal blue wet blended with ice blue and skull White for the power weapons. Hopefully this will work well!

Kall

I just used water to thin it down. Did fine for me!

Ahhh great!! Any specific ratio for the water to the amount of wash?

Kall

Start at 50-50 and keep adding water until you get to your desired wash. I didn't want very blue GK's so I used a TON of water in mine.

Ah ok! Thanks for this! Hopefully I'll have a model or two to show for this by Saturday!! Thanks again!!

Kall

The trick I learned with washes that I really like it is good to put on some kind of glossy varnish or finish over your base coated miniature. Let that dry completely and then put on the wash. then you are less likely to have it pool on areas that are not the recesses and if they do pool in places you do not want them, you can get a q-tip with alcohol and take a few swipes to remove without messing up your paint job underneath. only a few swipes though! I use an acrylic floor polish for this. I'd need to look at the bottle, but I think it is Future Floor polish.

Do you need to do this step, no, but it is great because you can selectively remove the wash where you do not want it.

Another good thing to use is ink. Specifically caligraphy inks. Like these. They work exceptionally well, come with a dropper, dilute well in water. Heck you can use them to make your own washes with some matte medium, distilled water and flow-aid, ala Les Bursley. I have used a couple of his recipes and they work really well.

Thanks for the tip synchro, so do you use the future floor polish as the alchol? Also do citadel do any of the gloss varnish your speaking of?

No, I use the floor polish instead of gloss varnish as well as to thin paints, etc. I just started using it a few weeks ago after seeing a post on here and it works great.

I have no idea if Citadel has a gloss varnish as I quit using their stuff once I found Vallejo paints and supplies. I love dropper bottles! Even if they do, it would be cheaper to use an alternative.

That being said, you could use the gloss varnish that Liquitex or Golden make and you can find at Michaels, or Vallejo gloss varnish from some place that carries their stuff local or online, but the floor polish is much cheaper than all of those. Get a large bottle of it from your local grocery store, wal-mart, target or off amazon.com and then a small dropper bottle to put it in for manageable size. Then you can use it in your house to make your floors shine and on your miniatures.