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Hey guys

Most painting videos I see use Nuln Oil or Agrax Earthshade for washes despite the color of the miniature

I'm painting my Chaos marines purple, and I have some Druchi Violet I can use to wash them with, however when I was painting my yellow marines, I used Casandora Yellow, and it made the model look like...
well, bad.

I use a brown wash for flesh and golds
Black wash for greys and silvers
Green wash over metalic green for lenses, frag grenades, laurels
Blue wash for the bulk of my Ultramarines. I also used it to tint shoulderpads for my old WoC army.
Red wash on capes. Sometimes a dab in mouths or evil eye sockets.

Depends on the color and how bold you want your shadows, or if you want a weathered/dirty look. Druchi violet will be good for your purple CSM, nuln oil would give a a strong shadow, but makes the mini look cartoon-like (which is fine if that's what you're going for).

For yellow, it depends on the tone of the yellow but I usually go with Seraphim Sepia or Aggrax Earthshade, same goes for Gold.

Honestly, I could write an entire blog on the different applications and tricks for washes, but I'd suggest googling some more tutorials. Washes can be used for detail work that takes time and layers, and they can be used with 1 or 2 primary colors to create a tabletop quality army in no time.

Depends. I use black for most things to give a weathered and dirty look, or on faces to bring out the definition. Brown is mostly for grime, earth tones, and sometimes skin colored. I've rarely used color washes, but I'd use them mainly on things I really want to add depth of color to, for example a torch, lightning, daemon skin

There are so many ways to use washes making the question quite complex...

I use them to give interesting shading to flesh, bone and also on terrainfeatures. Usually swab over and drybrush onto in several tones for a very subtle wash effect.
I use oil washes to put shading on armour, I just make a thin line in the recess and then blend with spirits.
I use black wash for sot effects on flamers and similar.

Among other uses.

The problem with yellow wash over yellow armour might be that they are different types of yellow.

I use black or Agrax wash if I want to add shading on minis fast; a coat or two of either (or even both) is a very easy way to add a lot of definition with minimal effort.

Coloured washes I use to tie together highlights; for example, before the wash the blue tones I use for Ultramarines look quite disjointed, but a wash of Asurmen blue brings them all much closer in tone and gives a smoother transition, which a black/brown wouldn't do.

Coloured washes are also useful or adding glows or subtly changing the tone without altering the colour itself.

Thing is, like a paint, a wash is a particular shade of a colour, and if your wash is a lighter/similar colour to your base colour then the wash isn't actually going to do anything. So basically (by which I mean not considering more advanced techniques), coloured washes are meant to be applied to lighter colours to provide minimal shading (where a black or dark brown would be too dark).

For dark blues, greens, purples, so on, then it's black (or dark brown) washes all the way.

Oh, and purple wash is amazing on gold. Give it a go!

 Riquende wrote:


Oh, and purple wash is amazing on gold. Give it a go!

Also on flesh, coloured washes work well. Green or blue gives a sickly/undead look, purple or red does the opposite, making the face more alive/warm.

 Paradigm wrote:

 Riquende wrote:


Oh, and purple wash is amazing on gold. Give it a go!

Also on flesh, coloured washes work well. Green or blue gives a sickly/undead look, purple or red does the opposite, making the face more alive/warm.

Indeed but you can also use purple for a cold pale flesh tone when its done over Rakarth flesh. My dark elves are done Rakarth> Druchii violet> rackarth+pallid wych highlight. For my guardsmen I do Dwarf flesh, druchii around the eyes and mouth and then a light coat of agrax before highlighting up to elf flesh.

You can use whatever wash color you want on whatever base color.
For instance, a blue wash on a blue basecoat is the easiest solution. The most immediate and intuitive. But a purple wash on a blue coat can give interesting results. And using red wash to shade a blue gives a deep and vibrant result.

Most tutorials use brown washes like devlan mud/agrax thing because those have a neutral tone, and you can use them on the whole models (or on several areas).


Some things I often use :
- purple wash on gold
- red wash on blue
- green wash on purple

Colored washes work really well on zombies/Nurgle stuff because it can give you nice, sickly effects. Blue, green, red, and purple washes over a grey-purple base coat gives a really nice and convincing bruise effect.