well it finally happened the days of the hobby cheat juice are behind us oil washes have taken
over and have put the acrylic wash out of a job the king is dead long live the king not true
hey guys jay here welcome to eons of battle washes moist mastery cheat juice liquid talent
fluid flare aquatic aptitude shade paints whatever you call them they have taken a backseat lately to
the new hotness on the block oils but i believe that washes still deserve a spot in the toolbox
of all many painters and i think i can explain why also stay tuned all the way till the end to
see a montage of painted minis courtesy of the eob complete community those dirty spotlight hoggers i
wish i could rant and rave against the oil paints but there's actually a lot to like about them they
have a long working time allowing you to apply paint at your leisure and make corrections as they
appear and these adjustments are simple to make pulling off the paint with a thinner soaked q-tip
compare that to acrylic where it is basically impossible to remove paint once it's dry
oil has a lot of practicality and oil is exciting it's new it's witchcraft you probably bought a
fancy new paint in tubes synthetic brushes and a can of odorless thinner it's the hot new thing
right now and all the cool kids are doing it i think the trouble with watches is that they
were actually hurt by their larger-than-life reputation they were heralded as the thing that
will make painting easy instant success it will be that fast and it will be that easy the trouble
with washes is that they're not magic they're just paint paint like any other it still takes
skill and practice to use them properly but once you get the hang of it you will unlock the magic
it can become the secret sauce of your paint jobs it'll allow you to achieve fast shades and
sexy shadows washes you were the chosen paint fixer you were meant to destroy the need for
skill not joining the confusion bring balance to the paint job not leave it in sloppiness
i hate you yes washes are not a miracle cure but they are still pretty epic wash paints are
specifically engineered paints designed to brush on and flow away from raised areas on the mini and
into the recesses shading the mini for you most paint companies make a line of washes and some of
my favorites are games workshop shades like null oil and egg racks earthshade and all the army
painter quick shades i have also used vallejo and sorry vallejo but your washes just ain't that good
they're more like watery paint and i can add water to my own paint thank you very much
to me the thing that makes a good wash is the thickness wash paints are much thinner than normal
acrylics but they are still a little gel like that little bit of thickness helps them stick to where
you put them very watery paint often gets runny and hard to control wash paints are very thin but
they're still made to behave like normal paints to apply a wash there's essentially two ways to
go about it you can glob it onto a model and let it dry or apply it carefully to one small spot and
perfect it in the moments the blob on technique is the advertised way to use a wash you brush it on
then let it dry and wherever it pools becomes your shadow and it does a decent job of this
one thing to keep in mind is washes only work really well on lighter colors
if this is black and this is white you want to apply washes to colors that are on this half
if you apply a dark brown wash over dark brown paint it won't change the look that much
to use washes just brush them on and work quickly to apply an even coat if you're too slow the edges
of your brush strokes can dry out and then you will get a small line where the two parts meets
once you have the model coated it can take a minute or two to dry and you can just let
it dry and deal with what happens but really you want to play with it while it's still wet
you can take a brush that is dry but still damp you never want to touch paint with dry bristles
with your brush you can touch it to the mini and soak up the wash that is pooling in areas that you
don't want the wash will outline details and do some slight highlighting and shading of surfaces
painting a model this way is a very solid way of doing things but i find myself using watches
much more often in a surgical approach a surgical strike is what i do more often if i want to add
some quick shadows i put on a watch in the same thick fashion but then i introduce some thinner
now you can use a product thinner or water in a pinch but water can start to thin the wash too
much and you'll lose some of its ability to stay put so to help stop this you can mix a little
bit of matte medium into your thinning water i applied some brown wash to the tan parts of his
uniforms and i wicked away excess paint from the raised areas i could just dunk the whole
model and it would help push the contrast but it'll be much better to use specific colors and
levels of wash to enhance the contrast i already have the brown wash brings out the texture of his
coat then i applied a green wash to darken the shadows of his pants and blend my highlights
and for his weapons and backpack i globbed on some null noil and since i already had a
xenothal highlight this will increase the contrast without losing any of the detail i almost never
thin washes on a pallet i prefer to glob it on and then correct while it's on the model that way i
can see it at its most saturated and then tone it down from there if i want to on this tau symbol i
liked how strong the recesses got and i wicked away wash that was sitting on top of the whites
this is how i use wash paint most of the time a selective wash it's not a dunk it's a small amount
of wash to push the value of what i'm working on but a wash paint is rarely the final step i always
find that a wash does too good a job of darkening an area and so i have to go back in and brighten
it up i usually do this with glazes brush strokes of thin paint i do this so that i retain the nice
gradients left behind by the wash if i apply paint just like i would a base coat i would get lines of
color that sit on top of my nice wash job and that doesn't look very convincing a nice glaze does the
trick subtlety you want those color transitions and to keep the outlining the wash did for you
i said that i always apply washes neat right out of the pot or bottle but for washes this might
be a little controversial but i actually prefer gw pots to dropper bottles for me
washes are technical paints to be used to achieve an effect so i don't load them onto my palette
when i start a paint job and since i always glob it on straight from the pot it makes sense to go
one brush load at a time from the pot rather than pour out a whole drop from a bottle only taking
paint one brush load at a time saves me paints but there is a pretty huge downside to gw pots as well
it can knock over and spill everything oh no i have spilt my gw wash whatever shall i do
there we go it was about half full before and now it's just about half full i saved almost
every drop the only thing that would have probably helped this process along would be
a little funnel but still not too bad i got all of my wash back with just a sponge
wash paints are great when i want to get things painted decent and fast i haven't found anything
better in terms of washes to buy i would say pick up colors as you need them you'll probably get
more mileage out of black and brown than any others and for those i would recommend agrax
earthshade and nullen oil from gw they are pretty great paints and they dry quick and matte which
is awesome after those two however i think you can skip all the other gw washes i think they're
too saturated with color to fill out the rest of your wash colors i would recommend army painter
they are cheap and they have a nice uniform feel across all the colors they probably have
a few too many browns mid brown is a little redder where light tone is a little yellower
and they do dry a little bit glossy which is kind of annoying but all in all they're good quality
paints once you get the feel for watches they will never let you down not only have washes never let
me down but neither has the eons of battle patreon the best way to support us is by becoming a member
of our patreon over there you'll gain access to some behind the scenes voting on what models i
paint live on youtube a hobby hangout live stream every week and more with that out of the way let's
learn more about washes those are the main ways to use washes but there are some others as well
and these are the ones that get me really excited about washes can be a nice quick way to bring in a
little color you can mix and match them to achieve some cool blends like on this tyranid bio weapon
it's a nice fleshy pink but i can rub some blue and green washes on it to give it a more sickly
appearance in the recesses and similarly to give life to organic shapes you can also use washes to
add color onto metal on this deathwatch biker i added blue and purple washes to his chrome armor
to make it more visually interesting these are examples of tinting like on this face i don't
have to add a bunch of colors onto my palette or go back in with highlighting i can just put
a drop of blue wash to bring his face from warm to cold now there is another product out there in the
hobby sphere that is doing the same job acrylic washes can do and that is panel liner and it looks
interesting but washes can do the same job and you probably already own them and in a whole bunch
of different colors to boot the way to panel line with a wash is to take advantage of that thickness
i was talking about earlier you get a good brush load it up with wash and carefully run it along
the line you want to shade the body of this wash will hold it in place and let the paint dry nice
and saturated in that area on this shoulder the wash flows and hangs in the corner between
the trim and the armor giving a nice outline now sometimes the detail is so small it can
be difficult to get your brush in there take this towel shoulder the recesses are nice and dark but
i got paint spilling over onto the surfaces that should be clean now i have to go in and fix those
spots the trick to panel lining with washes is to add a little bit of water first take some water on
your brush run it over the area you want to shade then let it dry now the water will dry in a second
or two on the flat panel but it'll stay wet in the recesses and that's what you want now the area you
want to pin shade is already wet so you can load up a brush with shade and just touch it to the
panel and the wash will flow through the water and effortlessly leave you with perfect panel lines
just keep depositing wash in these areas until they're as dark as you want it's super easy and it
works great i do this method all the time even on areas that have a lot of different surfaces like
this gas can i slapped water over the whole thing and then i just let the wash flow doing a nice job
pin shading and flowing along the edges and seams it even works on highlighting this little skull
and crossbone symbol so those are the painting challenges that make me reach for the washes the
only thing left i want to touch on is the common mistakes i see people making with washes now
washes will work best on perfectly prepared models in fact if a model has any imperfections like a
crusty prime job or a big ugly mold line washers will do what they do best and highlight the
offending texture and accent the problem instead of hiding him as you can see on this chaplain
shades will not save it and on the scout trooper's shotgun the big ugly mold line on the shoulder is
made more prominent by that wash paint and another problem i see is letting excessive amounts of
watch pool and dry on a model it's definitely possible to have too much of a good thing
if you want to get your wash darker it's better to do two coats instead of one thick one your paint
job will thank you for using patience if you go with too thick you will get pools that are just
solid color you want washes to be transparent on the good example i put two thin coats and
because of this the wash paint behaves and i have a lot more control over where it goes looking at
this side by side one cape has nice brown shadows and the other has some brown blotches and it took
over an hour to dry so that is wash paints in a fraction of the time it would take me to break out
the oils i have already applied a wash correctly the first time and using the same brush i used to
paint the rest of the model before oil has even had a chance to start drying my model is already
dry and i moved on to other things oils are great but there's no getting out of learning your tools
nothing is ever easy before you know what you're doing but washes are worth learning so there you
have it folks wash paints are still a major player in the mini painting game or am i completely wrong
i know you'll let me know in the comments below but now it's time for the real star of the show
let's look at this week's eob completes we put out a challenge to our community to send
us before and after photos of their recently finished models to be immortalized in our videos
if you want to join in the fun you can submit a before and after photo of your painted mini
to our discord server which you can find in the description below or you can post it to instagram
with the hashtag eobcomplete without further ado let's look at and get inspired by what the folks
have finished this week a plague burst crawler by tweepler a space marine intercessor by obscuro
a stormcast eternal by magellan miniatures some vanguard veterans by croven a reich nor
the grimhailer by zelentis some space marines by steven the drunk butler a trigon by aaron an
imperial guard commander by not so pro painter a brute drone by the happy heretic some chaos
warriors by disco some chaos knights by beard some jean steelers by decimation a thunderhammer storm
shield terminator by mukul a primaris outrider by chooch 7097 some terminators by nick an
intercessor space marine by vegawoski get stompa the loudest band in the galaxy by gail braid
lady oleander by phoenix a malefo executioner by irritated walrus a tau battle suit by shuddai a
bain blade tank by eyes on thick thighs some primaries outriders by unbekant lp a space
marine by simon lobotomized monkey and a towel riptide battle suit by two doula congratulations
to everyone for a job well done it's no small feat to get paint on a mini and you all should
feel really proud nothing gets the hobby juices flowing like finishing a project and we thank you
for sharing your work motivating us and the hobby community to paint our plastic thanks for sharing