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That's very blotchy, I'm certain I can get something that looks smoother than that and I'll post some pics. I reckon I might be able to get something smoother just using paint straight from the pot, it might be your application method.


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Prelim results...

1. Application brush needs to be large and ideally soft. I have a mop like brush floating around somewhere which I suggest would give the best results, but I can't find it If I can find it I'll report.

2. You need to thin it down *heaps* and apply several thin coats. I haven't spent much time experimenting but I put around 3 drops wash + 3 to 4 drops of Humbrol thinner + 3 to 4 drops of water.

3. That mix (compared to straight out of the pot) has very good self levelling properties, but it has a tendency to bead up, so the surface you're applying it to needs to be MATT rather than gloss, otherwise you'll get lots of little beads of wash.

I didn't have any spare tanks ready to wash so I just used this plasticard panel which I painted a few days ago to test various camo schemes.



The lighter sand colour in the 2 upper squares is both the same colour, the one on the left is after 1 coat of wash, the one in the upper right is after 3 coats of wash. The first 2 layers was about 3 drops wash + 3 to 4 drops of Humbrol thinner + 3 to 4 drops of water, the final layer was 2 drops wash + 8 drops humbrol thinner (which was a bit too thin, it didn't really darken it much and was prone to pooling).

I'm not saying those mixtures were ideal, simply that's the first thing I tested. The wash I used was Army Painter's Dark Tone, which behaves very similar to GW's Badab Black.

You do have to be careful when applying it, thinner layers are smoother but obviously it takes more layers to build up. I used a 1cm wide flat brush because it's the largest one I had on hand, larger would be better. Think of it like sweeping, if you get a blotch you have to sweep it away. If you can't get rid of the blotch because there's too much paint dab the brush on a tissue to get rid of the excess and try sweeping it again.


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EDIT: I also had a crack of applying oil paint to a panel and then rubbing it off.... it sorta works, but I wouldn't recommend it. The surface needs to be glossy and if it's not consistent (some areas of the underlying paint are a bit grainier) then when you rub off the oils they'll be patchy because it won't rub off the grainy areas as easily.

So it can work if you have a perfect (and ideally reasonably glossy) surface to begin with, BUT it shows up even the tiniest of blemishes in the underlying paint (which when you think about it, is good for airbrushed aircraft models which have lots of fine panel lines and rivet detail, but bad for a hairy brush painted tank which is going to lots of unintentional blemishes from the brush work).

Looks like from what I am gathering is the best method to undercoat with 2 layers of say testors dull cote, THEN add the nuln oil watered down in light layers? What about submerging it in a 50/50 mix of water/oil? There would be no streaks, but I feel likeit would still come out crappy.

 Orock wrote:
Looks like from what I am gathering is the best method to undercoat with 2 layers of say testors dull cote, THEN add the nuln oil watered down in light layers?

I haven't actually used Testors dullcoat in spray can form, so I'm not sure how many layers of dullcoat it will need.

You can't JUST thin with water, otherwise the surface tension will be too great and the wash will bead up. I used Humbrol acrylic thinners because it's what I have on hand, it also has a bit of drying retarder in it (so you have to wait longer between coats, but the coats will tend to come out smoother). You MIGHT be able to use something like Lahmian Medium instead, I haven't tried it to know if it'll work. But certainly not just water, you won't be able to thin it as far as you need to thin it and still have it flow across the surface properly.

I'd say aim for a 2:1 thinner:wash ratio, 1:1:1 of water:humbrol thinner:wash worked for me (which works out 2:1 of diluents:wash), but that was just the first thing I tried, doesn't mean it's the best thing! If it's still splotchy you can try thinning it a bit more and/or apply thinner coats (less paint on the brush).

What about submerging it in a 50/50 mix of water/oil? There would be no streaks, but I feel likeit would still come out crappy.

You're going to have a problem with pooling then. you can give it a shot but you'll need to have a brush on hand to clean up the pools and when you do that you may end up with the same splotchiness you had before. And again I wouldn't use 50/50 water/oil, I'd mix in some proper acrylic thinners to break the surface tension and let it settle better.

Also it'd be hard/expensive to submerge a tank in a mix like that.

Well I will go and buy some laham medium and some more oil then and try it.

Mabye I will try it on a piece of plasticard first to make sure its not crap.

Take your base coat and use a large drybrush on the flat open areas. You want the brush to be VERY dry in this case since you're mostly concerned with evening out the blemishes and not actually attempting to add a layer of paint.

@Orock - I would really encourage you to try painting just the recesses with nuhln oil rather than drowning the model in a wash of any kind.

The idea of a wash is for it to slip into the recesses to create areas of shadow. You generally don't want to stain the areas that are large and flat on a big model like a tank or a jet, because you end up unevenly staining a panel that isn't supposed to look mottled. You can just dunk a small model like infantry, because there are many recesses and few large, flat panels, but it doesn't work on a lot of larger models.

I think the issue is that the infantry look considerably darker due to dipping, so he's trying to match it

@Kb_lock - Oops, I forgot to address that, yeah. My suggestion would be to darken the basecoat paint. There's lots of ways to do that; the easiest is simply to add some brown or black.

Mix up a whole bottle or pot of it before you start, so that your vehicles can be a consistent color.

You can also use that pot to fix the problem of, "I've washed my whole model -- how do I fix this errant brush stroke I made during detailing?"

My base coat is true red spray paint in a spray can, so I am boned as far as tinting that or I would. It's an army painter rattle can color. But mabye they have a darker one I can use for the vehicles only. Would have to re prime them then.


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Looking at the army painter website demon red and dragon red appear to be straight darker versions. What do you guys think? Just prime the vehicles with a darker red? It might not be uniform with the troops, but at least the vehicles would be uniform with each other.

If you can find a darker spray and it gives you the results you like, go for that. Do whatever gives you the results you're happy with the easiest.

BUT, in general I'm going to have to disagree with you there Talys. The technique I described above is called filtering rather than washing.

Filtering is a very common technique to darken (or lighten or fade out) surfaces on tank models and it does NOT look the same as simply darkening the base colour, it gives you a result similar to washing but needs to be built up more.

With a filter, you're trying to avoid excessive pooling in the crevices (the opposite to a wash), BUT it still gives the surface subtle modulation that stops it looking unnaturally flat (without looking blotchy) and painting a transparent layer of paint (wash, filter) over the top of a base most definitely gives a different look to simply darkening the base coat.

By happy chance, that camo pattern I painted above were test panels for a desert camo scheme on an aircraft and I like the result of filtering it so much so that I now intend to do that on the actual model

But, Orock, do whatever gives you the results you're happy with. If a darker spray gives you the results you want, that's faster than applying filters

 Talys wrote:
You can also use that pot to fix the problem of, "I've washed my whole model -- how do I fix this errant brush stroke I made during detailing?"

I always aim to clean up mistakes when they happen instead of waiting for them to dry and covering them.

@Orock - Yeah, you might get away with the different reds with Army Painter. They're both pretty nice.

@Skink - I hear what you mean about unnaturally flat surfaces. Sure, filtering or glazing can give you a nice result. I think it's still challenging to take a tank that starts Mephiston (or AP Dragon) Red, and turn it into a similar color as infantry that started with Mephiston and got dunked in Agrax, because Mephiston + Agrax is a much darker color than Mephiston by itself. Also, the larger the surface, the harder it will be to get you that result. For example, if you take a Voidraven, and want to use a paintbrush to darken Mephiston with washes/glazes/filters to the point where it's a relatively even color to infantry that's Mephiston + Agrax -- it's going to take so much time and effort, man.

An airbrush can give you some modulation, as you put it, too, but Orock specifically wanted a non-airbrush solution. Weathering is also an easy solution: nothing like some nicks and scrapes to give that surface a more realistic look (but it does nothing to darken the model). If you're looking at complex solutions, the FW book on techniques shows you have they do the tortoise shell look on a titan, and it's very convincing, as well, but it also requires an airbrush.

A lot of it depends on how much time you want to put into the model, too. I sort of had the impression that Orock wanted a relatively simple solution that was easily reproducible and didn't take a ton of effort; I could be wrong.

It's not JUST the modulation that makes filtering a good option, having transparent layers of paint over a basecoat it always going to look different to simply changing the basecoat colour itself. I've never been able to match a washed model's colour with a solid colour (and I have tried on my Cadians/DKOK, in the end I satisfied myself with the fact they'd look slightly different).

As for the time it takes... I'm still learning, most the time just comes from learning how to do it. I have never really played with filters before. Once you know how to do it, I would suggest it wouldn't take more than 10 minutes to apply a filter to a large tank. Wait a few minutes for it to dry and then put another layer on.

I think most the time just comes down to finding a good mix of thinners and paint.... or you could just buy a MIG filter (I haven't tried them myself, but they're ready made filters).

I actually just then experimented with enamel filters.... Using a Testors model master paint with Testors enamel thinner, probably about 1:10 paint:thinner (so very thin). It works extremely well, it just draws itself over the surface beautifully. So much so that I just threw a dark grey filter over a random Rhino model in less than 2 minutes

Seriously, I spend more time experimenting with techniques than I spend actually painting the models

EDIT: Enamels do go on a bit smoother but the downside is if you try and make it too thick then it becomes unpredictable, it might look like it goes on fine but then it dries a bit grainy. It also is attracted to dirt/dust on the model and brush like you wouldn't believe, both brush and model needs to be very clean otherwise the wash will pool around any particles. In the end it's probably not a huge benefit compared to the acrylics other than the fact it's less likely to bead up.

Pictures arent the best. But this is the basic marine color scheme. It looks much nicer than the tank this way. Still stymied by how to make it smoothe.

Also anyone know where you can get custom water transfers, or at least less common ones? Want to make my own chapter so I can use that as which ever chapter I feel like that day.

Fallouthobbies do custom decals

So I sprayed a rhino with two seperate coats of testors dull cote matte, and mixed up a 2 part lahmian medium to one part nuln oil ink in a glass jar, and applied it in 2 coats to the tank with a large soft brush.. For my tastes its a success. There was only one blotchy part where I just applied way too much. First pic is a marine partially undercoated with the red i used, the other marine is base coated and with a nuln oil wash, but not diluted even with water. The second pic is the first rhino I did. I may start over on that one. The second was done with the method I mentioned. And the other pics are comparison.