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>>But, perhaps if I held the model in my hand, and could look very closely, it'd not be so impressive.

Dipping isn't meant to make models stand up to close-range scrutiny. It's meant to get whole armies looking good on the table quickly.

In some way the Golden Demon raises the bar too high. Most players do not have the time or skill to paint whole armies to anything like that kind of level.

I don't dip, but I do inkwash everything (the result looks similar) I don't see the problem unless it's just jealousy. I'm planning an Ork army in the new year as a counterpoint to my Crimson Fist force and I'll be trying dipping for them.
My old necron army was sprayed with boltgun metal spray and airbrushed with a black/green ink mix. people got very sniffy about it.
I don't see the problem. I have a Job and a life. There is only so many hours I can devote to painting.

Phryxis wrote:

Most dipped models are on the second stage of painting.

I can't entirely agree with that...

I'd like to see a really good pic of a dipped model. Everything I've seen online gives an impression of a great finished look, but the pics aren't clear enough to really know how the model looks.

For example, Voodoo's shots aren't the clearest, but they're decent. What I see there looks very good, and when a model looks very good, I'd call it "finished." But, perhaps if I held the model in my hand, and could look very closely, it'd not be so impressive.

One thing that is not in question, is the massive improvement the dipped model is over the simple basecoat job.

All that said, there are many models where dipping won't get you very far. Probably the great majority, in fact.

Any model that works well "dirty" or "natural" looking, like an Ork, Tyranid or Kroot, I think you can get truly great results with dipping. Something that rivals a skilled painter using advanced techniques in terms of final product.

But, High Elves? Empire or Brettonians? Pretty much any model that needs to look clean, crisp and to show nice hard edges between colors, ths technique will fall pretty flat. I think it'll serve the painter well as a partial technique, for example dipped chainmail, with a nice clean tabard over it, but clean paint jobs demand more.

My Blood Angels, for example, I basecoated red, applied an all over wash (essentially a brushed on dip), then layered/feathered several shades of red and orange over this. In this case, the dip really was just the second stage of painting.

I just updated my thread here with shots of the now Matte finished Dwarf and 2 Shoota Boyz. I took the pics on Macro mode, no flash, with plenty of lighting and a sill camera so it's about as detailed and clear as I can get it.

Personally, I think the pictures make them look worse than they are if anything, since when I hold them about a foot away it looks pretty good, even better on the table while playing.

Oh and you're 100% right on only certain armies/models being dip-able. I've decided I'm going to ink and highlight my Dwarfs, one to be able to learn how to do it and two because it'll look better. Dwarfs are supposed to be clean, at least in my vision of the army, and I don't want the dip look on my guys.

The Orks came out great dipped, and I'm betting the Ogres I'm going to do after XMas probably will too.

To address what Killcrazy is saying, the whole point of this exercise is to get my armies looking better than they would normally. I'm not a good painter, and once I "paint an army" I start to like doing it less and less because of the grind. I don't want to win a Golden Demon, I don't want to win best painted. The goal here is to say, take my army from a 15/30 in painting (what I got in Baltimore GD with my Marines) to say a 20/30 or a little better with my Dipped Orks.

For the coming Ogres, it's to get the army done and "looking good" in a long weekend. I don't want to win something with it, but I want it painted and I want it to look better than my other stuff and I don't want to spend a lot of time painting it.

If you're going to ink your dwarves you might want to try making a wash. I did this for my chaos army and it's working really well. I took a few dark colors that I will use for shading, like black and I use dark flesh for bone and gold. Anyway find an old empty paint pot or buy the cheapy 50 cent ones at art stores and mix up about 30-40% paint, and the rest a 50/50 mix of water and matte medium. You can buy the medium at art stores where they have the acrylic paints. It's cheap. You might need to play with the ratios and add more water or less paint depending on how light or opaque you want the wash to be

Anyway, you end up with really thin paint and when you paint it on your model the medium helps it stick into the cracks and stay there, in the end you get a dipped looking result, but without the super-shine and you can also have a lot more control and you can shade it whatever color you want. Then when that's dry you can do some quick & easy drybrushing for highlights here and there. It's actually pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Not as fast as dipping, but I'm starting to like the results better.

If you have access to them, the vallejo paints are real good for making washes, since they're in dropper bottles it will be easier to measure and be less messy

Anyway find an old empty paint pot or buy the cheapy 50 cent ones at art stores and mix up about 30-40% paint, and the rest a 50/50 mix of water and matte medium.

All good tips, but perhaps the biggest one of all, would be to mix a LOT of your custom wash.

Not only does wash tend to get used up fast, but it also tends to be a mix, not just of colors but of mediums, water, etc. It's important to keep the color consistant, but it's equally important to keep the dilution consistent.

As a result, I'd recommend getting a large bottle for your wash mix. A normal GW paint pot might be ok, but in that case, fill it all the way up. You want something you can slap right on the model and not have to tune in color or dilution.

Over time it might dry out a bit, so you may have to water it back down, but in general the key is to keep that to a minimum.

The point to all this is to avoid fussing with the wash later on, when you're on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th unit. This fussing is time consuming and you'll probably never get it 100% right anyway.

At some point these washes will be necessary, as the dipping stuff doesn't seem to come in all the colors one might want.

My main interest in trying out dipping is to see how the consistency of the dipping stuff effects things. It seems to have a set of properties that lend well to the dipping process. If the viscosity, opacity, etc can be recreated in normal water based paints, that'd be a great advantage.