Slitherine

Excuse this question from a self-taught painter. I am painting some bare chested Ancient Britons and would like to know if its best to add the woad before or after I add the wash to the skin.

Eques wrote:Excuse this question from a self-taught painter. I am painting some bare chested Ancient Britons and would like to know if its best to add the woad before or after I add the wash to the skin.

The wash will dull the blue down quite a bit (or quite a lot if you are using GW inks and not watering them down enough).

I'd do the wash after but just make sure its not too thick or it wont look blue any more. It will prevent the circus-troop effect that some newly painted barbarian armies get.

anthony

Use a FUTURE floor wax wash (mix floor wax with black acrylic paint - 30:1 mix of wax to paint).

This will reduce the darkening effect on high spots while bringing out details in the recesses.

Spike

I am self taught as well. The way I do my fleshtones, I use 2 washes. The first is a very heavy wash on the first layer of fleshtone,and then 2 highlights. The woad would then come as the next step. My final step would be a glaze of a very,very thin(almost translucent) wash. I find that this last step pulls all the layers together. I suppose I would do it differently if I were doing a wet pallet,but I havent tried that method yet. In my painting I mostly concentrate on 2 areas that I feel are key-fleshtones and the base. To me those are the 2 areas that the eye is most drawn to. I usually dont put as much effort into the rest of the figure,and I usually get compliments,and I consider my painting as a good wargame paint job,but not competition level.

spikemesq wrote:Use a FUTURE floor wax wash (mix floor wax with black acrylic paint - 30:1 mix of wax to paint).

This will reduce the darkening effect on high spots while bringing out details in the recesses.

Spike

If you use the above you might want to add a drop of dish soap for surface tension....

I like Windsor&Newton peat-brown over a dusting of varnish.

see madaxeman.com as he has a whole discussion on using washes...

Madcam.