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I'm working on my first army, Blood Angels and having a tough time getting any shadow detail on the white wings. I've tried a Vallejo black wash, but it just turns everything grey. Any tips would be appreciated. This is my first time painting miniatures so I apologize for the beginner question.

One simple thing that you could do is start with a light grey as your base for the white, then follow with a watered down wash of black, and finish with a dry brush of white to pick out the top portions.

Very simple to do and if you are beginning with painting it should give a pretty good result.

Thanks! I'll try that out tonight . I appreciate the quick response

If you're going to wash white, you've got to water down the wash pretty harshly. 20/1 is still probably too much ink, 50/1 or even 100/1 works much better.

Depending on your desired end-color, wash with a light blue or a light tan for a "coo"l or "warm" white value.

The blue tends to look more pristine where the tan, depending how dark, can seem more natural to down-right dirty.

In either case, hightlight with pure white again to clean things up and you're good to go.

I've found sepia wash works ok on wings, but again as mentioed you will have to touch up with the white again.

Along with hte suggestion to thin the ink/wash down, you can also add some white paint into it. That helps soften the contrast of the shading as it becomes more of a 'grey wash' than a black.

When to wash white? Very rarely!

It's almost always quicker and easier to get a nice white tone by working up from a grey, blue/grey or tan colour.

Shadow grey -> Space Wolves Grey -> White was always the way to go. New paints, I dunno.

 Vulcan wrote:
If you're going to wash white, you've got to water down the wash pretty harshly. 20/1 is still probably too much ink, 50/1 or even 100/1 works much better.

Do you guys add some kind of surfactant, like dish soap, when you do this?

I'd not wash white with a black wash at it, as mentioned above use a blue or a tan/biege colour, so that you generate a cool or warm white respectively.

And if you are just lathering the wash on you will pretty muh always have to retouch the colour, if you are careful with placement however, you might get away with not doing so.