Making washes and filters

There are two main types of washes used in scale modeling. A standard wash and a pin wash. The main difference is how they are applied.

The standard wash involves loading a substantial sized paint brush with wash liquid and essentially brushing it over the entire area. this helps to add depth because as the carrier fluid evaporates it tends to leave the pigment that's left in the corners and recesses where shadows would normally be in the 1:1 world. The variation on this is called a 'filter', because it slightly changes the base color of what you are painting when you add the wash, some modelers use this as a form of color modulation to add visual interest to builds. ie: the outer fuselage of a jet when you see panels that just are not quite the same color as others. may have been created by simply adding a wash to the specific panel.

Now for the pin wash. The pin wash is different than a standard wash in its application. To do a pin wash you grab a small brush with medium to long length bristles. This type of brush will help hold onto a sufficient amount of wash for the task at hand. once the brush is loaded with wash, you simply touch the tip of it to the panel line of what you want to accentuate and capillary action draws it in to fill the void. when the carrier evaporates it leaves the pigment exactly where you want it. Great for accentuating panel lines or for rivet detail.

Washes can be either oil/enamel based or acrylic and you may need either depending on your base coats. You never want to use the same based wash as your base coat is, it can soften the base and cause problems. so basic rule of thumb would be, if you work alot with acrylic, oil washes will be your friend. if you mainly work in enamels you will want to use acrylic washes.

Since i work mainly in acrylic paint now, i am going to make up some oil washes.

i have some store bought ones that i use occasionally but have recently decided to add some more variety into the collection i keep here so i have more variations to choose from.

i cant see myself spending £5 a piece for each bottle of wash so instead i will show you how to make your own for a fraction of the cost.

off to amazon i went....£30 investment has netted me this...

Now, depending on how creative i want to get with the colors, i could easily make 25 different washes and each would have a use somewhere down the line.

I will say that if i were to do this again i would have gotten 20ml or even 30ml bottles. the 10's are a bit small but they will work for now.

lets see what colors i have to work with...

Decent selection, good amount of browns and reds for rusting effects. only ones i probably wont turn into washes right now are the blues and greens. ( if i were doing a water diorama i could use the blues , and if i were doing scenery i could use the greens )

the process is dead easy, squeeze a ribbon of black about an inch long into one of the bottles. fill with thinner almost to the top. Shake the snots out of it until the pigment is dispersed. On your first try, test it out on a spare car body to make sure it does what you want it to.

So i know now that it is the right ratio i was looking for, now i will buzz through the rest of the colors. Now if it didnt flow..i would have added more thinner, if i thought it didnt have enough pigment..i would have added a bit more till i was happy with it.

Did a dozen this morning, reds, browns, yellows, the black and the white...the lighter colors like the white and yellow can be used to add highlights here and there in the other side of where you would flow the darker washes.

Might mix some custom variations later to get some greys and tans.

Experiment and have fun with it.

I store the remaining paints away in their tubes, the oil paints are great for detail painting and even adding texture in certain cases for dioramas or heavily weathered vehicles.