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Hi all, I'm currently getting back into doing some painting after a few years break and have noticed there is a somewhat larger paint range available these days.

I've primarily used the GW paint range in the past and I'm curious to know what alternatives are available to GW's shade range.

Also what are people's experiences with these alternatives, are they similar? Are they better?

I know there is the Army Painter Quick Shade line, but never used it. As for others IDK.

Just try looking for "washes" rather than shades. GW are just using jargon to isolate their product.

Most major ranges will have washes, Army painter does, Vallejo does. Wouldn't surprise me if Reaper has them as well.

You can even make your own if you buy some Matte Medium and add a few drops of paint/ink.

Coat D'arms have super shader, which act pretty much like Army Painter quick shade, in light brown, dark brown and black. And washes in their main fantasy acrylic range, which act pretty much like... thinned paint. Good thing their inks are decent.

Winsor & Newton's shellac drawing inks were pretty good last time I checked. Glossy, but smooth shading. Can't imagine they changed the formula much.

Army painter quick shade is great. Reapers washes are fine, but nothing special.

The Secret Weapon range of washes, based on the recipe by Les Bursely, is cracking good.

You can use artists inks if you let them down with medium or water. Get a solution you like, and store it in a dropper bottle for quick use. It's easily the best way to get punchy sepia and tones you can customise yourself.

Just check the bottles for a permanence and transparency rating if you're going to be putting them on display in daylight for long periods.

Army Painter.

Dark Tone = GW Badab Black/Nuln Oil
Strong Tone = Devlan Mud/Agrax Earthshade
Soft Tone = Sepia

Red, Blue, Green and Purple tone all do what they say on the tin. Very neutral hues, unlike GW's.

Secret Weapon have a bewildering array of washes that are less standard, eg. different types of yellow, turquoise etc.

Vallejo have a decent range. Their pale grey is a mainstay of my painting as it's very easy to shade white with effectively.

I've been using a lot of Didi's inks, lately, which the Warstore carries for a decent price.

I've had good luck with Windward Washes. They're an outfit out of California and have an Overturned Earth that's a lot like Delvin Mud, and a Battlefield Armour that I like more than Nuln Oil.

Army painter's washes are great.
I was really disappointed when GW changed its range, and I found a perfect replacement with AP. I use them A LOT !

I've used Army Painter's washes for lots of terrain pieces. It foams a lot more than GW washes, which is pretty annoying to me, but purely for cost reasons, I've used their strong and dark washes.

Personally, I really like washes in pots rather than droppers, since I don't see any point in decanting a wash into a palette. Of course, you can just pour AP wash into a glass mixing jar, or an old GW pot, too.

Now, with 24ml GW washes, the price of the black and brown are actually very attractive, and I probably won't use AP in future terrain projects.

I cannot recommend army painter shades enough. They're awesome. I also use water based drawing inks when I want a softer edge to the shading. These inks bleed through the following layers of paint, giving a graduated shade.

 Talys wrote:
Now, with 24ml GW washes, the price of the black and brown are actually very attractive, and I probably won't use AP in future terrain projects.

24ml nuln oil is the best thing from 2015

@kb_lock - my never-ending Cities of Death agree

I am very happy with my switch to Vallejo washes. But I still use Agrax Earthshade a ton.

Hmm sounds like there a few lines I should look into then, I think I'll try out Secret Weapon first, they have a pretty extensive range of colours going on by the looks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Thanks for the input everyone!

My paint range comprises:-

Basics:- (GW).
Skull white spray can
Chaos black spray can
Old style Citadel "Bolter shells" - Basic 9 pots of paint.
gold, silver, flesh-tones and a few technical paints.

Then:-

Shading is done with Vallejo Model inks (love using inks.. ), watered/thinned down to whatever richness is required.

"glazing", Blending, effects and base coat spraying with Vallejo model air range (16 decent sized dropper bottles with a large range of base colours).

When painting colour schemes I don't use the 6 or so slightly different colours of paint GW suggest, I just blend up my own from the right sorts of colour combinations by hand.

K.

Has anyone tried the scale 75 inks 'inktensity' ?

anab0lic wrote:
Has anyone tried the scale 75 inks 'inktensity' ?

Had a go the other day.

Definitely intense. Nice to add to another wash to give it more oomph, but a bit too heavy duty for my needs on its own.

I use the vallejo wash range, they are a lot chaeper, quite nice and have complementary colors to the GW range. E.g. they got a grey wash that works very well with plain white.

I got MiG oil washes that are great for black lining vehicles etc.

GW Camo Green and Agrax Earth shade are great tones though that I can't get around for my DKOK dudes.

You can buy oil paints from any craft store (Michaels is where i get mine), and then mix your own up using thinner. I have made quite a few of my own, and you can kinda set your shade range by the mixture you produce (more/less paint etc).