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I'm painting undead, and am using some old GW black wash over bone white to add depth to rib cages, skulls, etc. I shake the wash 10-15 seconds, and mix it with water and matte medium, about 2 parts wash to 2 parts water to 1 part matte medium; to the mix I add a single drop soap (which was, I thought, supposed to help with this problem!).

When the test batch dried, there were the dreaded black rings around the recesses - instead of a nice black shadow, I got a black "high water mark" and the deepest recesses were a dark gray. Not the end of the world, I guess, but still pretty lame.

Can someone explain (or link me) to what's going on here? What the heck is happening that the wash pigment pulls to the edge of the stuff, instead of settling down in the nice recesses where I want it to? Why would this happen, and what would you recommend doing to avoid? Toss the wash and pick up more nuln oil? The new GW black wash is actually pretty nice, I just have lots of this old stuff, and it really seems a waste not to use it.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

I recently started using citadel's nuln oil shade and it works great for the effect that your going for. Pick up a bottle for like $4 and give it a shot.

did you try the wash without all of the additives? most likely, you reduced the surface tension of it so much with the medihm and the soap that the pigments wouldn't settle.

Use Nuln Oil instead, use pure Badab Black instead of all that stuff you added, or the surest way to get a clean job done: gloss varnish then pin wash.

isn't Badab Black the old version of Nuln Oil?

either way, all the junk you added is what screwed it up.

Sounds like you diluted the wash too much and not enough pigment was left to properly shade the recesses, but enough to leave rings as it dried. As suggested, try Badab Black without any, or at least without so much, additive.

I've had a bad bottle of wash do similar, for me it was Vallejo umber wash. Tried rescuing it by messing with additives but it was just bad and had to be thrown.

This is one of those annoying problems I had too. I love washes but I hate 'drying rings' when it's added to heavily. Doing several lighter layers of was can help solve the problem, but there's also a product I found that is great for painting in general.

Flow Aid by Liquitex is an additive that helps paints flow (hence the name) and paint more smoothly. It also helps significantly with the 'water mark' problem when paints and washes dry.

When you're using it with paint you don't mix it directly to the paint; add it to water 20-to-1 (20-water, 1-FlowAid) and use that solution as your thinning water as you paint. it's really amazing stuff; painting 'chalky' colours smoothly becomes much easier. You can add the 20-to-1 mix to Washes to get some benefit, and it might be enough, but I find a drop or two in the mix is called for if you want to really combat the 'water mark' problem. More is not better here, don't add too much.

As mentioned, keep your wash mix simple too; Wash base tweaked with ink to darken or quality acrylic thinner to lighten, add a bit of FlowAid, and it should be good-to-go.

I'd suggest badab black if you can find some.
Nuln oil currently has alot of issues with it leaving a grey, ash-like finish.
Ive got 5 pots of it and 4 of them are currently doing this. (all ordered at different times)