Best washes for storm/snow troopers?

By Packerman29, in Painting

What are the best washes/paints? Do I wait for ffgs?

Edited by Packerman29

Depends on personal taste honestly. I have a hodge podge of Citadel and Vallejo paints, but some prefer army painter or other brands. I would recommend Sorastros painting tutorials, he goes into detail about what paints to use and how to thin and/or mix them

I'm a huge fan of Citadel's washes, though I have used both Army Painter and Vallejo as well. For stormtroopers, it depends on what "look" you are going for. Nuln oil works fine but might be too dark, while a pale gray wash might not be dark enough. My troopers are usually covered in Jabiimi or Mimban mud, so I tend to go with Citadel's Earthshade as often as not.

Wait just a little bit longer and grab some Apothecary White Contrast paint:
ContrastPaintRange-May24-WhiteExample9yhjs.jpg

What is a wash?

is it something you apply to whole model?

For my storms, I use straight Nuln Oil painted into the recesses only with a detail brush.

Personally, I prime with GW Corax white (which actually comes out a light bluish/grey, then paint white over that, which gives a similar result to what GreatMazinKaiser posted. Otherwise, Vallejo makes a grey wash that works really well, too.

https://www.amazon.com/Vallejo-Pale-Gray-Wash-17ml/dp/B001TLRUXO

Diluted nuln oil. Very easy to over do it, so dilute and dilute again.

Nuln Oil is my go to for stormtroopers. Prime in white. Dark gray base on all the "black parts". Wash with Nuln Oil. I could understand diluting, but I personally don't. And clean it up with lots of white highlights.

I recently discovered a really good recipe for an all over wash if you don't want to "pin-wash" (detail in the fine recesses).

I did a 1:1:1 mix of Nuln Oil, Drakenhof Nightshade & Lahmian Medium.

The nightshade is a blue which dulls down the colouring and fits with the white armour nicely, and the Lahmium thins the whole mixture out nicely and doesn't stain the white armour areas.


On 5/30/2019 at 12:27 AM, AldousSnow said:

Nuln Oil is my go to for stormtroopers. Prime in white. Dark gray base on all the "black parts". Wash with Nuln Oil. I could understand diluting, but I personally don't. And clean it up with lots of white highlights.

If you don't dilute, you will have to clean up with lots of white hightlights. You still get a good result this way, it is just more work.

The quick method is prime with light gray, zenithal highlighting with white, paint the dark parts with german gray/gun metal gray, directed diluted nuln oil in the seems, then patch up anything that needs patching up. It is great for doing large number of stormies all at once.

If you want show peices, diluting out the wash is still best, but you are manually hightlighting everything.

Vallejo blue grey wash. They are not as strong in pigment than the citadel washes, and allow for you to layer on the wash a layer at a time until you at a happy with it.

Vallejo 76524 Model Color 35 ml Wash Paints - Blue Grey

On 6/17/2019 at 11:22 AM, syrath said:

Vallejo blue grey wash. They are not as strong in pigment than the citadel washes, and allow for you to layer on the wash a layer at a time until you at a happy with it.

Vallejo 76524 Model Color 35 ml Wash Paints - Blue Grey

I'm getting very much the same effect when heavy "dry brushing" with contrast apocathary white and bascilicum grey.

I'm also finding a few of the new contrasts seem to work even better than originally intended if you use them as the "wash" step of base/wash/highlight.

9 hours ago, Ralgon said:

I'm getting very much the same effect when heavy "dry brushing" with contrast apocathary white and bascilicum grey.

I'm also finding a few of the new contrasts seem to work even better than originally intended if you use them as the "wash" step of base/wash/highlight.

Pretty much how I'm using them