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Ok so now they are common knowledge but if you look at "my first mini" posts on insta no one uses any washes or highlights at all. I wonder how long current techniques have been around?? Did the eavy metal team have access to all funky paints we have now or were they just ninjas getting incredible results way ahead of their time?

It's been around since way before 'Eavy Metal.
If you take a look at early scale modellers you'll see that they were way ahead of the wargaming curve.


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I think you'll find that 'My first' threads will have more to do with the painters age than available material.

Citadel bought out their 'Expert Paint Set' in the late 1980's. This contained 9 inks in tiny dropper bottles. I think i still have a few knocking about somewhere!
Here's a set on Ebay:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Games-Workshop-Citadel-Miniatures-Expert-Paint-Set-1980s-very-rare-boxed/223071753638?hash=item33f01cd5a6:g:1dYAAOSwu05bR5h1

We used to use washes, dry pigments, highlights, layers, etc when working on model train scenery and the trains themselves. So, a very long time. Much of what people think of as weathering are techniques established in the 70s for model railroads.

Rogerio134134 wrote:
Ok so now they are common knowledge but if you look at "my first mini" posts on insta no one uses any washes or highlights at all. I wonder how long current techniques have been around?? Did the eavy metal team have access to all funky paints we have now or were they just ninjas getting incredible results way ahead of their time?

HM get incredible results because they are very skilled, and they are profesional painters. AKA they get payed for it, that gives you much better time to paint.

You should not be so put back by constructive critesimn. Washes and layering are the easiest way to get good results very easy.

Dunno how long they have been around, but personal experience is why the so called "first models" dont have any depth to its paintjob.
Another thing spesificly for GW could be that not many liked the inks they had back then. While they was great for quick and easy shading, they where a bit messy if you had no controll and that is prolly why they where not allowed to use at the paint table in the GW shops. They was allso rather glossy.

So we had to do black lining.(manualy paint a black line to seperate parts/colours) I guess that is the clousest you get to todays shadewash.

As techniques? A really long time. Scale modelers of various types basically taught mini painters everything we know. Previously you just mixed it all yourself.

As pre-made paints? They’re new. Earliest I know of for something like that is the Reaper Master Series which debuted pre-2010 I think and was originally based around sets of three paints that are a shadow, mid-tone, and highlight. Pre-mixed washes are newer yet.

As for ‘Eavy Metal they’re nothing special compared to what scale modelers are doing at any given point in time. I’m not saying they’re bad or anything it’s just they’re comparable to what Ravel/Tamiya/other plastic model companies get for publicity shots. They’re just another group of professional model builders and painters.

Before citadel paints. Seemed like so long ago now. Enamels and oils could be applied by some of the same techniques. Washes you used paint thinners to thin down the paint dry brushing killed the brush. Layering was the only way to achieve some sort of depth, blending was quite rare but it was nearly all wet blending as enamels seemed to take ages to dry so you had time. I had a book in the late 70's about painting military models. Mostly Napoleonic stuff but the person who wrote the book was very good at painting miniatures.


The first true water based acrylics I came across were Citadel in the 80's. At the time they appeared it was almost as if somebody had thrown a light switch. They seemed to answer everybody's prayers for a safer, quicker to dry, smell less paint. Despite the problem colours I felt they were a million miles from enamel paints. Layering was an old method for shading as was dry brushing brought over from the days of enamel, but I think two brush blending may of came in from a Citadel-Games Workshop painter in the 80's. Before citadel brought in washes we had already started to use inks from Art shops or water down our paints with a touch of washing up liquid to break the surface tension of the water so they went on smoothly. I think somewhere I have some old painting articles in a few ancient white dwarf magazines. I will have to try to hunt them out.

When I started painting in the late 90s we figured out we could get a great effect by just adding lots of water to black and let it wash around details and in crevices.
We didnt have white dwarf or any other help exept for some small armybook hints about painting, so watered down black and occasional blending was the full extent of the technique .

Years later when I got back in the hobby, there was a huge internet community, and I found out about washes and drybrushing and highlighting, and how just painting a basic colour is called "flat".

 battyrat wrote:
Before citadel paints. Seemed like so long ago now. Enamels and oils could be applied by some of the same techniques. Washes you used paint thinners to thin down the paint dry brushing killed the brush. Layering was the only way to achieve some sort of depth, blending was quite rare but it was nearly all wet blending as enamels seemed to take ages to dry so you had time. I had a book in the late 70's about painting military models. Mostly Napoleonic stuff but the person who wrote the book was very good at painting miniatures.


The first true water based acrylics I came across were Citadel in the 80's. At the time they appeared it was almost as if somebody had thrown a light switch. They seemed to answer everybody's prayers for a safer, quicker to dry, smell less paint. Despite the problem colours I felt they were a million miles from enamel paints. Layering was an old method for shading as was dry brushing brought over from the days of enamel, but I think two brush blending may of came in from a Citadel-Games Workshop painter in the 80's. Before citadel brought in washes we had already started to use inks from Art shops or water down our paints with a touch of washing up liquid to break the surface tension of the water so they went on smoothly. I think somewhere I have some old painting articles in a few ancient white dwarf magazines. I will have to try to hunt them out.

Yup, I used dawn for making washes. Though a lot of people used, and still use, future as an acrylic medium for washes.