Tutorial Tuesday: An Absolute Beginner's Guide to Washes and Highlights
Hey there true believers, itās Tuesday, and that means itās time for another tutorial fromĀ The Tutorials of Tomorrow! (echo implied)
This week, weāre going to be going over the very basic application of washes, and how to successfully apply them to your miniatures. If youāre already familiar with washes, youāll probably not get much out of this, as itās meant for the novice painter. Fear not, there will be more advanced tutorials in the future, where weāll go over mixing your own washes, flow improver, matte medium, washes in relation to color theory, washes and the interplay of light and shadow and other, even more esoteric subjects.Ā
If you found the second half of that last paragraph confusing or intimidating, youāre in the right place!Ā
To get started, lets lay out the materials weāll be using for this endeavor.Ā
Iāll be using a combination of three paints and a wash to illustrate the basics today.Ā
Iām painting the cloak of the Night Goblin in a purple scheme, so Iāve gone with various purples and the Citadel wash, Druchi Violet. I personally use P3 Paints and Citadel Washes, but since weāre discussing basic theory, Iām not going into mixing your own colors in this tutorial. That being said, Citadel has a wide array of premixed colors, and more than enough to use them in lieu of mixing your own shades.
The normal prep work is done on the model In this case, a Night Goblin Body from Games Workshop. Itās removed from the sprue, mold lines are cut away, itās been washed in soap and water (to remove any residual mold release) and itās been primed black.
The first step is to paint the area with your base color. This will be the primary color on the finished area of the model. It should be the darkest paint you use in your color scheme (your wash will be darker). In my case, itās Citadelās Xereus Purple, thinned to the consistency of 2% milk (always, always, always, thin your paints).
Youāll note that itās not a perfect application of paint. Itās a bit inconsistent and the primer shows a little in some thin patches. Donāt worry at all about it, so long as the whole area is covered. The additional layers of paint will ensure that the whole area will be covered evenly with paint when finished. Besides that, using the thinnest layers possible will keep the paint from erasing any fine details.
Next, the application of the Druchi Violet wash.
Itās important to note that you use a wash differently than the other paints in your arsenal. You want your brush to soak up enough of the wash to cause it to pool in the crevices of your model. You can see an example of this in the folds of the robe, pictured above. You want to focus on applying the wash to the areas that would be wreathed in shadow, as it will darken whatever color itās applied on top of.Ā
On the flat/raised areas of a model, the wash tends to dry unevenly, leading to discolored spots. While itās best to try and keep the wash to the areas that you want darkened, itās not a huge point of concern. Weāll be cleaning up the edges of the wash with another coat of our base color. In my case, that means another layer of Xereus Purple.
As you can see in the above photo. Iāve re-applied the Xereus Purple over all of the raised areas, where the light would hit the cloth of the robes. If you want to sound like an artiste/pretentious, you can refer to this as āreclaiming your base colorā. If you donāt want people to think you think too highly of yourself, just call it cleaning up your wash. Make sure that all of the recessed, shaded areas are left the color of the Druchi Violet wash.
Already, you can see a much bolder contrast between the two colors. Weāre going to make the variances even more pronounced with our first highlight layer. In this case, Iām going to use Genestealer Purple along the ridges and raised edges of the robe to give the illusion of direct light on the fabric. These are going to be some fine lines, so Iād recommend a fine brush (I like a size 1 or 0, personally).
You can see now how much more detail has been drawn out of the robe. All the the folds are dark and the edges have the lighter purple highlights to throw them into relief. The majority of the robe is still Xereus Purple, but now it forms soft shadows in areas, starkly contrasting with the brightness of the highlight and darkness of the exposed wash. This effect really adds to the perception of depth and makes your model appear to have more detail than actually exists. Close inspection will show you where Iāve used the highlights to form small wrinkles in the robe, where none actually exist (above the left knee, in the picture). You could really go nuts with it, but Iām keeping it simple for the sake of illustration (there will be more advanced tutorials on the subject in the future).
Nearly done now, just the extreme highlight remains. In my case, Iām using a very light purple, Daemonette Hide. This highlight is used sparingly, inside of the first highlight layer. The idea is to pick out areas that recieve the most light. In this case that is the most pronounced folds in the robe and the very bottom edge.
Above, you can see the finished result. The last highlight layer is very subtle, but in this case, subtlety wins the day.
There you have it, not so complicated after all, at least in this basic form. There is a lot of intricacy in some of the more advanced uses of washes, but you can get perfectly satisfactory tabletop quality results out of this simple technique.Ā
May your bristles never bend,Ā
Will Tomorrow
