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I was just wondering if anyone has ever used Army Painter's Quickshade before. I know back in the glory days of glass paint pots and pewter minis this was the norm, but it always dulled the colors, and now literally goes against everything I know about applying washes sparingly and with extra care as if it were layer paint. I have a big batch painting job of a 2 tac and devistator squads for a friend's Dark Angels army. Not looking for a Golden Demon here, but I want to maintain some semblance of quality, and if Army Painter somehow figured out how to "dip" a whole damn mini into a bucket of wash and have it come out the other end looking decent, I might employ this technique.

Saw some polished pics from Army Painter of the results, but I always take these with a grain of salt. Any examples? Stay away? Thoughts?

It's all I use. However, I don't paint for competitions or pretend I'm some master painter.

1) Yes, it absolutely dulls the colours. Not terribly so, but it does.

2) You'd want to do decals afterwards, and I haven't done much with decals so I'm not sure how effective it is.

3) Like anything, it takes some time to figure out how to do it, and learn the tricks of doing it consistently and easily.

I use it here in this "how-to" I did on my page a while ago.

http://myminiaturemischief.blogspot.com/2016/06/step-by-step-spiders.html

I've never used it on super dark miniatures, so I can't speak for using it on Dark Angels. For most other things, I like it and it works fine.

The trick is to realize you can really make a massive difference. I "hate" some of my minis before I dip them...lol, and then the dip saves them 100% and they look much better. However, I don't glaze, wash, highlight, etc. I just do a very basic paintjob, and dip. Hence I turn out like 250 minis a year. So, for people who want to get better at painting, I'd say avoid it.

For people who want a nice table-top finish and want it quickly? I'd suggest it.

Everything here is dipped:















etc.

Wow. I'm quite impressed with those results! Nothing on the darker spectrum as you mentioned though. Aside from the decals, do you dip as the final task to execute to complete the mini? Do you touch up with layers to lighten?

I figure the basic technique would be to dip, and then soak up the excess with a dry brush. I'll take a look at that how-to guide. Clearly you know what you're doing with this stuff. Thanks for the response!

EDIT: Also, how do you distinguish between the soft, strong and dark tones? Do you choose based on the color scheme -- adjusting for how much brightness you're looking to conserve -- or just how deep you want the contrast? Both?

It's all in the blog post I linked --- now, you "could" very easily dip, flat spray them...and then go back and highlight and keep painting. That's an option. I do think some people dip early in the painting process (like perhaps after priming). But, I go for speed and convenience.

The dip is a heavy wood varnish material, so you don't want to use a brush unless you have a bunch of thinner or mineral spirits on hand. I use shredded up paper towel (shredded not cut, so the smaller fibres draw out excess).

I used to wring them around outdoors to shake the dip off - until I dropped or threw a couple of minis, and now I don't do that anymore.

For me its:

1) cut, clean assemble.
2) apply basing materials.
3) prime.
4) paint.
5) dip.
6) flat.
7) paint base, apply grass.

Done.

I will be getting a tin, I have over 100 minis to repaint
The wife already hates that I have restarted the hobby so I need speed on my side to get them painted.

I've been very tempted to do a speed run on a Space Marine squad sometime, just to showcase how dumb/easy it is. If you wanted a simple squad painted to a super-minimal tournament standard, you could literally:

1) Assemble.
2) Spray prime (with coloured primer)
3) Paint the chest eagle, eyes, boltgun.
4) Dip.
5) Paint the base and toss on grass flock.

Done. You could, without exaggeration finish a squad or two in an afternoon (if not less time). The main time would be assembling the minis, and letting the dip dry (overnight is recommended). This is what I would do if I was painting up a super cheap little army for a 10 year old nephew or something (if they had no interest in painting themselves of course).

Definitely friend, although I prefer the ink versions to brush on (but not sparingly, believe me)

Dark is for darker or cooler colours like greys or blues. Strong for warmer colours like browns or reds. Soft is- well, I use it on creams and yellows, and occasionally flesh when I want some variation to my skin tones.

I always paint the base colours several shades lighter than I want the finished look to be, and let the shade bring it down for me.

Used liberally on the following:

So glad I posted this. I'm gonna get a can of each tonight. I do have a few projects where I will need to employ batch painting and it seems this will cut the time investment in half. I'm a big IF geek and as such I was planning out a Heresy-era 30K army of the 7th legion. This might actually help me get them to the table quicker, if of course this could work with a bright yellow, which I'm still a bit skeptical of, but worth a whirl!

Here is a pretty good comparison between Quickshade and Polyshades. Shows what the different tones look like on different basecoats. Definitely quite a few folks who use them as a pretty instant shade on minis.

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1632074/army-painter-quickshade-vs-minwax-polyshades-side#objcontainer_article23613908

 hybridmoments82 wrote:
So glad I posted this. I'm gonna get a can of each tonight. I do have a few projects where I will need to employ batch painting and it seems this will cut the time investment in half. I'm a big IF geek and as such I was planning out a Heresy-era 30K army of the 7th legion. This might actually help me get them to the table quicker, if of course this could work with a bright yellow, which I'm still a bit skeptical of, but worth a whirl!

It can, you just need to start with a really vivid yellow base coat.

It works great with bright yellow.

Elbows is the absolute expert on strong tone dip, but I'll just add a few of my own experiences with it as well as they might be helpful in this instance.

Firstly, it doesn't work well on dark colours. If you're painting Dark Angels, I'm not sure slapping it over Caliban Green will result in much more some muddy green-brown marines. The problem is that dark shade on a dark colour doesn't actually result in the nice contrast you're looking for, and that Elbows gets on his brightly coloured stuff. Do a couple of test models, but how I would do it is mix up a 50-50 mix of Caliban Green and Moot green and try it over that. You could even go lighter.

Using a dry brush to soak up the excess dip is definitely a valid technique, in fact it's something I'd absolutely recommend if you're happy to spend a bit more time on them. I've done it myself in the past and it can look really cool. It also guards against those stains you can get if the dip pools. As Elbows says, you will need white spirits (called mineral spirits in the US) to wash your brush. Do not use a good brush for this! Use an old busted brush, or get a super cheap one. You can certainly highlight over the top - I have done so myself. A few small highlights can finish the mini off nicely. I would give it a spray of Dullcoat first. More on which later.

I don't know how it would work with transfers. I've never used it with them. One problem I can see is that it might look strange to have the perfectly clean, unshaded transfer sat on top of the shaded, slightly grubby-looking shoulder pad. I would experiment on a test miniature again.

Finally, you might find it helpful to pick up a can of Testors Dullcoat. This is a matt spray varnish, in case you're not familiar with it. The army painter dip results in a gloss finish, which some people like and some don't. Personally, I don't like a gloss finish on miniatures. A quick spray of the Dullcoat will get rid of the gloss.

One advantage of the dip that I'm not sure anyone has mentioned is what a solid varnish it is. These minis will be super-protected, encased in a hard shell of varnish. The miniatures I've used the dip on, I'm quite confident would survive a nuclear strike with perhaps only minor chipping.

Hope this helps.

 feltmonkey wrote:
Firstly, it doesn't work well on dark colours. If you're painting Dark Angels, I'm not sure slapping it over Caliban Green will result in much more some muddy green-brown marines. The problem is that dark shade on a dark colour doesn't actually result in the nice contrast you're looking for, and that Elbows gets on his brightly coloured stuff. Do a couple of test models, but how I would do it is mix up a 50-50 mix of Caliban Green and Moot green and try it over that. You could even go lighter.

I did do a test run on a Caliban green with the "Strong" Quickshade but due to the muddiness, I'm thinking of just basecoating with a straight Moot green. Not sure if this is gonna make it look more like a Salamander or a Dark Angel, but I'm hoping that the strong Quickshade will dull out enough of the brightness to get it halfway in between a moot/caliban look. Good practice for my Fists for sure.

 feltmonkey wrote:
Using a dry brush to soak up the excess dip is definitely a valid technique, in fact it's something I'd absolutely recommend if you're happy to spend a bit more time on them. I've done it myself in the past and it can look really cool. It also guards against those stains you can get if the dip pools. As Elbows says, you will need white spirits (called mineral spirits in the US) to wash your brush. Do not use a good brush for this! Use an old busted brush, or get a super cheap one. You can certainly highlight over the top - I have done so myself. A few small highlights can finish the mini off nicely. I would give it a spray of Dullcoat first. More on which later.

I did notice that there's quite a noticeable sheen coming from the crevices of the mini where excessive amounts of Quickshade has collected after it dried. I took Elbows advice and used some shredded paper towel to soak up excess where needed on my second test, and to clean raised areas from being spotted with the dip. I've been taking photos of everything and may run a few tests with similar Space Marine minis in various colors using the three different kinds of Quickshade and post some results for others to use as a reference.

Thanks for the post!

Take a look at this article. Spinning off the excess dip with the milk frother saves a lot of time and hassle, and the results are well worth the minimal expense: