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About to start painting up some khorne berzkers, I'm generally a wash and dry brush type painter, but i don't know what's a better wash for the red armor, nuln oil, or the devlan mud equivalent??

Devan Mud would do just fine, Chestnut Ink, if you one of the lucky ones that still have some. I'm not seeing how nuln oil would look good.
You need wash or brown/reddish-brown hue.

I got pretty good results with Baal Red wash when it was stil available. Is the new formula roughly the same?

Devlan mud is gone, so what I use is Armypainter strong tone ink. It's very similar to Devlan.

Out of curiosity, what would a red wash do on red armour?

I guess it woulda create a deeper color, shading in the recesses.

When painting my Blood Ravens (the red is very similar to that of normal Berzerkers) I've bounced back and forth between Nuln and Agrax in the modern paint range.

Agrax works, but the shading gets lost; it's not very distinct, and quite subtle. Nuln, if used straight, is too thick, it collects and shades too much, but watered down a smidge, and it works quite well for a darker scheme.

The new carroburg crimson wash is not the same as the old baal red. Baal red created shades of red where it pooled but the new crimson seems to just leave almost black shadows. I imagine similar to using nuln oil.

I have used the old leviathan purple to shade red with some good results, but i've not used either nuln or agrax.

I used Khorne red then washed in agthrax followed by carroburg for these.

What is carroburg??

Those look good, like them.

The natural shading tone for Red is Green, so the wash you choose should have an element of Green in it for the most natural effect.


Carroburg Crimson is a great GW shade for red, because it is a deep red with a little green added. If it isn't dark enough for your tastes, you can add a little dark blue or brown to the mix.

 AG. wrote:
The natural shading tone for Red is Green, so the wash you choose should have an element of Green in it for the most natural effect.

Did not know this...
But green is a complementary colour to red, wouldn't it turn out weird? Always thought brown was the natural shading tone.

It depends what effect you're going for. Dark purple can actually make for a good wash over red to give some darker and deeper shadows without resorting to the dirtiness of a brown wash or the dulling black wash.

I used a mix of red, purple and brown washes on my cold one



By contrast, his shield was done purely with Devlan Mud. You can see it doesn't have nearly the depth that the Cold One skin has with it's additional purple wash.

Black is all the primary colours mixed together, so you can darken any primary colour by adding the other two primary colour to it.

If you mix two primary colours together, you get a secondary colour - so all you have to do to naturally darken a shade is mix in the secondary colour opposite it on a colour chart (as that colour is made from the two colours next door to it!)

Easy peasy.

Lol, yes. The way he worded it sounded like he wanted you to wash red with a green wash xD

But they're correct, trying to work on a complimentary color scheme will do wonders for you. That lizardman looks top notch.

But, jumping back to the topic:

Shading red with a thinned black wash, a brown wash, or a red wash (high, medium, and subtle contrast; respectively) will work depending on how you want your miniature to look. I suggest testing on a spare mini (or something else with texture). Splash some red on him, and a couple different washes just to see what kind of results you get. Pick your favorite! Also as noted above, you can get some nice effects by shading with purple (leviathan was used). Fits the complimentary scheme again, but not as excessively contrasted as black washes.

Armypainter makes the strong tone wash (as noted earlier) that is a very close match to the original Devlan Mud. If you want more contrast, go with a thinned nuln oil. If you want it more subtle, get your hands on a red wash (Baal red if possible).

I'm actually mixing up a red wash later today, following the AwesomePaintjob.com recipe by Les.