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Hi so I want to make one of my models darker, like literally tint it completely. I'm happy with the base coat paint job I just want all the colours darker. Would washing the whole thing with a big brush of nuln oil do it or is that gonna just make it look filthy?
I almost want a black tinted varnish spray if that exists? Any ideas please?

what you need to do is add a coat or two of nuln oil- however be careful not to apply too much and remove any pooling on flat surfaces to not make it look dirty.

This should do the job perfectly but you have to be careful to not apply too much.

Ok so a couple of light coats you think? That's good I asked because I was thinking of splashing it on heavy all over.
It's a heldrake and I really don't want to repaint it!

Depending on what color it is you might want to consider a brown shade instead of a black one. Brown might work better on warm colors.

Basically it's painted mechanicus standard grey and I want it to fit in with my black legion so I think nuln oil is definitely the one. I'm happy for the gold to be darker too as all of my army is quite muted.

Depending on how much darker you want the grey, you may want to make a custom wash, instead of going right to Nuln oil, particularly if there are large flat areas.

You can make your own washes with 1 part paint, 3 parts medium, and 4 parts water. If you start this with grey, you would have 8 parts (by volume) that you could add nuln oil to, 2 parts nuln oil would be a 4:1 ratio. 4 parts Nuln would be a 2:1 ratio, and likely be noticeably darker.

I prefer browns, particularly reikland for shading gold as it keeps the warm tones of antique gold.

I'd suggest starting with the custom wash, and maybe only use Nuln at the edges or in cracks.

Hi sorry can you give me that a little simpler! You're saying mix 1 part grey, 3 parts nuln and 4 parts water?
I basically want the grey to look black, or as close to it as possible. I did read a tutorial a while back where they painted black armour by shading from grey so Im hoping that's possible

I'll start with the "medium" part. That's the clear part of paint that you add pigment (colour) to. If you only added medium to an existing paint, you would dilute the pigment (less coverage) but it would remain the same consistency.

If you wanted a colour to appear "hazy" over another colour, without running to the edges like a wash does, adding medium would be the way to go.

By adding the water, the paint gets thinner and runs off of the raised edges and settles or "pools" in recesses or corners.

If you look for Lamian Medium that's how GW sells it in little pots.

So you could take, for example, one drop of grey paint, 3 drops of Lamian Medium, and 4 drops of water to make grey wash.

You could then add drops of Nuln Oil (which is a black wash made by the same process) to the grey wash. The mixture will darken, and keep the same consistency.

You can wash black over a relatively dark grey to get what looks like highlighted black. Sometimes it looks like charcoal grey, which might work for you. I thought you wanted to keep the colour "grey", so I was suggesting a less stark shade for the wash.

Ah okay, thanks for the clarity that's making more sense.
I want the grey to look black but it does need a wash regardless as at the moment it is just simple basecoating. I will try the nuln oil as it needs a wash anyway, if that doesn't look dark enough I'll try the lamian medium mixed with black. Does that sound sensible?

Nuln oil is a premade black wash. Adding medium would thicken it while making it less densely coloured.

If you want it to look black, just keep applying unmodified Nuln Oil coats until you're happy with how dark it is.