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hey guys, I'm working on my crimson slaughter guys... and honestly I hate working in red. But I have a quick question. I painted them by doing a black primer, 45 degree spray of grey, then a top and tip highlight of white. then sprayed them with the red, there is some pretty nice transitions to them.

My question is this. Should I wash them in Red or a Black/Brown wash? What would the color difference be? I was thinking of just using my Army painter Dark Dip but figured that would defeat the purpose of doing the undercoating to preshade the mini.

Ideas? thanks!

Nice highlights, I'd pinwash them, so get agrax and paintvit directly to the recesses

In general if you're going for a deep and slightly more organic red then purple can be a good colour to use as a wash.

I use Reikland Flesh-shade for my Blood Angels. The browns are offset with some reds and even pinks. I like it.

My suggestion would be that if you have a test mini, try it on that. If not, grab some dollar store army dudes, prime them with red, and then try different washes on them.

Actually, you can use a blue wash to get very contrasty shadows. The cold dark blue contrasts with the warm reds and pops a lot.

Ultimately, it depends on the look you want. There are always a bunch of different ways you can paint something, there's no "right way", you just need to find the style that works best for your paint scheme.

I generally wash the reds with blue. Brown, purple or green would work too. I would avoid using black.

An example of blue wash on red armour :

that actually looks really good!

i use carroberg crimson. the red GW wash. it is slightly purple so gives a nice effect. i use nuln in the deepest recesses.

Brown washes look really good on red.

Black washes look a little too dark (unless they're thinned), in my opinion.

Yeah, brown or blue gives you a softer more natural transition. Black gives a more defined one, as well as being darker(so it can depend on how dark you want your final red to appear).

Red also works, but for that IMO you need to thin it down and still use a brown wash in the darkest areas as the red wash won't get those areas to the depth more people want.

Cool, I just learned something I never would have thought of. I'm going to be painting a lot of red for my AoS army. I'm going to try blue wash. I normally use brown, and I've never been 100% happy with it. Green makes sense as well. To mix a darker red, you add a touch of green. I'll try both.

Just thin the blue wash, or your armor will end up looking purple.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Just thin the blue wash, or your armor will end up looking purple.

Noted, thanks.

lol I purchased a bunch of toy army men from the dollar store so I'll be priming and painting them tonight to give the different colors a try.

One of my gaming group recommended I thin down my washes with a medium like airbrush medium or matte medium to help it flow into the recesses and not leave the splotches like it normally does.