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I have Army Painter Quickshade and the stuff to make a brown Oil Wash. I want to paint my Menoth army fairly quickly so I want to do a dip/wash method.

Going to be trying:
1) White Primer
2) Bleached Bone
3) Highlights
4) Detail base coating
5) Detail Highlights
6) Gloss Varnish coat
7) ???Army Painter Quickshade or Oil Wash???

I'm not sure which would be the best to use... I hear SO much about how good Oil Washes are but all the tutorials I find on them, the painter just uses them in the recesses of the models and not like the Quickshade where they just put it over everything.

So my question is/ TLDR: Can you use Oil Washes over the entire model like Quickshade? Is it as good as Quickshade or should I stick to Army Painter Quickshade if I want to do a dipping type method to shade? (My goal is to get a shade into all the recesses of my model and make my model have "depth" after doing it's base colors.

For the oil wash method, I think you would gloss varnish the model, then apply oil wash semi liberally - making sure its where you need it but not worrying too much about other areas... then getting a cotton bud with mineral spirits on(whatever you used to thin the oil paint) and start wiping away the oil paint, cleaning up the colours untill you like the effect. The cotton bud wont reach the crevices and recesses provided that you're not dripping the mineral spirit all down the figure

For what it sounds you intend to do with your menoth, I think that the quickshade will work more in your favor then an oil wash would.

HairySticks wrote:
For the oil wash method, I think you would gloss varnish the model, then apply oil wash semi liberally - making sure its where you need it but not worrying too much about other areas... then getting a cotton bud with mineral spirits on(whatever you used to thin the oil paint) and start wiping away the oil paint, cleaning up the colours untill you like the effect. The cotton bud wont reach the crevices and recesses provided that you're not dripping the mineral spirit all down the figure

Thanks for this but I know how to use the oil wash. It was more of a question of which would look better in the end, oil washing or army painter quick shade. Thanks for the help though!

If possible, could you put up Before and After images of whatever process you choose? I'd like to grow my painting skill vicariously though other's experimentation!

Good luck and good outcome!

 stratassj wrote:
For what it sounds you intend to do with your menoth, I think that the quickshade will work more in your favor then an oil wash would.

Thanks. Any rhyme or reason behind this? Or mostly because it's easier to use?

The general thought, at least on my end, is something like this.

Using an Oil wash, your primary goal is to line and shade all areas that are sunken into the miniature, or act as a borderline between say, the greater shoulder pad, and the menofix in the center. Over a flat surface, from what i've noticed, the oil wash tends to clump and dry into not so pleasant looking blotches of pigment.

Using a Polyurethane dip, such as the Army Painter Quickshade, or even going the cheeper route and picking some minwax wood stain, It should work two fold. First, like the oil wash it should pick out and shade the crevices, and line around detail. Secondly, it should give a subtle gradient to your flat surfaces, giving alittle more interest to what would have otherwise been a single shade, without, if its applied correctly, leaving behind patches of pigment that mar your color and work.

This is, of course my own personal experience between the two, another Dakka member might have had different results between the methods, But where ive just been working on afew units of bone white skeletons using the dip method, i think it should give a close example to a standard menoth color set.

Oil washes and dips are two very different techniques. IMO, oil washes are meant to be applied in a very controlled fashion to specific areas of the model. The advantage of oil washes is that you can use thinner to reactive the wash and further manipulate the effect. Oil washes tend to have less surface tension and get sucked into various lines and hard edges easily, which is why there are good for lining.

A dip is a very blunt technique, where you dunk the entire model into the dip solution to give a model a fast shading solution.

This could also be replicated with a full body acryllic was (Nuln Oil, Agrax Earthshade, etc), but these cannot be reactivated later like an oil wash can.