 Hello everybody and welcome to another hobby cheating video and today we're gonna talk all about washes Let's get into it. Let's strict techno man sir. That is Vinci V. Let us get to the technique and learn it Vinci V style Washes are a thing we often encounter very early in this hobby They're a way to suddenly add almost seemingly miraculous depth to our miniatures We apply a base coat and then the first time when we're starting painting We apply a wash and suddenly it's like oh my god. I know how to paint. This is incredible The problem is as you advance people often run into challenges where suddenly the wash doesn't seem to work Or they can't figure out how to get the most out of it or It's leaving a lot of tide marks and streaking or why does it work in this case, but not in that case? Don't worry All of those questions and more we're gonna answer today As I take you through how to get the most out of your washes when to use them when to avoid them and share some tips And tricks on on making sure that you have a good experience when working with them. Let's start at the beginning What is this thing? What even is a wash? I assume you showed up here because you have some idea of what it is but just in case you don't know a wash is Nothing more than basically a low amount of pigment mixed with quite a lot of normal acrylic thinner acrylic medium That is to say just paint without pigment, right? So it's a low amount of pigment mixed with that and then there are usually multiple additives in there so this includes things like flow improver usually quite a lot of it which increases capillary action and Reduces surface tension and helps things to actually flow into the recesses more efficiently and then also usually some kind of drying retardant To make sure that it dries a little more slowly and that capillary action can take effect The basic premise of them is that you apply them over an area of your miniature they Flow more heavily into the recesses and create natural areas of shadow and gradient that is meant to Represent basically, you know the dark recesses that happen the occlusion shadows that occur in between different layers and different volumes that are on the miniature basically in between all the different folds and ruffles and Everything that might be there all the recessed areas of the sculpt become darker Hence replicating well shadows as they dry they of course normally then will pull away from the raised areas And so you see less coverage there and more only in those recessed areas Remember washes have a very low amount of pigment in them. So hence they'll only Not have much effect or barely stain the upper areas the flat areas the areas on top hopefully we'll talk about that and Mostly they will collect in the recesses where there's such a density of the pigment that's collected it still applies the Effective color. Alright, let's talk a little about tools when you're doing washes We know that they're there to add depth But what what even really are they how do I get these things? Okay? So first of all several companies just make these things As I'm sure you're probably aware if you're here you can buy these things from Games Workshop You can buy these things from the army painter and many other companies also make similar products But as I said these washes when you're getting them in this sort of prefabricated way It's just the chemistry mix of whatever that company has decided right of the appropriate amount of this pigment Medium flow improver and drying retardant that is their own secret herbs and spices You can of course make your own as well There's no reason you can't you can do it with either paint or ink by then thinning it way out with acrylic medium Flow improver and drying retardant all these things are available from arts and craft stores on your own So you could mix big giant bottles of your own washes now There are also other kinds of washes what I'm specifically focusing on here today is acrylic washes There are also oil washes and enamels and things like that. Those are gonna We're gonna leave for a separate video. I want to focus completely on keeping it simple on acrylic washes today So you've got your wash the other tool you're going to need to apply it is of course a brush And I want to be real careful here one of the things I see people often do I know I did it in some of the earlier as my painting is ruin brushes because of washes When you are applying a wash you want generally a bigger brush And you want an older beat-up brush go synthetic if you can but don't use anything nice If you're gonna use something that's a sable then you want to use an older sable That's tip has been well burnt down and can't be used for detail work anymore. Remember the capillary action That happens with washes goes both directions So not only is it flowing onto the miniature more easily But it's flowing from the belly of the brush up into the ferrule more easily where it will then dry and create Gunky awful paint and cause your brush to split. All right, let's talk application So when we are applying a wash, I usually work straight from the pot. You can still thin these You can whether that whether you're talking about something like army painter or whether you're talking about something like GW Everybody has mediums or things like that. You can't thin these with it's perfectly fine to do so if you like if you want less Effect, but you will really weaken them very fast as they're already a very low amount of pigment But I tend to work with them pretty straight. You don't really need to thin them very much most of the time There are applications But we'll leave that for later Most of time you're going to go straight into the bottle or apply some of the out of the dropper bottle straight onto your palette Take it get a nice brush load and then apply it to the miniature quite straightforward or so it seems Now and when you swoop it all over the area, it's going to then run naturally into all of the recesses washes are often challenging because People will use them especially as they start out and they'll think wow I got really great results on this manager, but then really bad ones on this other miniature and they're not sure why Well, here's a couple of reasons So first off washes naturally react better when a figure has more More recesses I guess for lack of a better term. So the more detail the more sort of Say it cut-ins into the miniature that there are the better it is to utilize a wash To its fullest effect Basically think of it like this fur and hair. That's your best case scenario for a wash Big flat surfaces like a cloak or something like that. That's your worst case for a wash So the more individual Changes in the verticality of the sculpt and the deeper those go and the more clean and sharp they are The better the wash will perform if you've got real soft to miniatures or something like that That just like the sculpt is bad or you're dealing with something That's like mostly flesh wearing a cloak and almost nothing else like you're painting a Spartan or something That's gonna be a terrible time for the most part for a wash. There's so much large flat surface You will end up with tide marks and things like that One of the things to remember here about a wash is that you are making all of the recesses Universally dark now we can control that a little we'll talk about in our tips and tricks section But for the most part whether that that recess is upward facing towards the Sun or downward facing towards the ground The wash is gonna flow into it in roughly the same amount and create the same shadow So it's not really realistic lighting. We're making it's just this sort of like weird diffuse Assumption of like lights all around the person at sort of even you know 3 p.m. To 9 p.m. Way like I don't say like it's a horizontal line of light around them some kind of magical ring light basically But that doesn't really matter when you're starting out and I'm gonna show you some ways We can mitigate that in the actual application of the wash So now that we understand the basics, let's talk tips and tricks This is probably why you're here. So hopefully I can give you some stuff that's gonna change the way you wash your miniatures Number one keep the brush moving keep it alive Keep it flowing. It needs to be sweeping around the miniature at all points in time You do not need a lot of this wash to do a whole figure as a point of fact One brushful can usually cover a great deal of a single miniature You might need only two over the whole thing depending on you know assuming a normal 28 millimeter human or something You want to be constantly moving that brush and spreading it out a wash will work the best when it's quite minimally applied Because once it dries you can always go back and apply a second Well applied wash very quickly very easily and this minimizes your tide marks You're staining all of those sorts of things The enemy of this process is the pool Remember gravity is gonna keep acting on this and that flow improver is going to improve that capillary action So even as you're moving around you might not see a little pool or puddle immediately But then when you wait a few seconds and turn back all of a sudden boop there's a pool there so you need to be really keeping that brush alive and moving swooping over the miniature and They're just completely clearing those puddles out and you need to move fast Even though this thing has a little bit of drying retardant in it. Usually it's still dries relatively quickly It's an acrylic paint that's being spread very thin as soon as air is hitting this thing It's starting to dry So you want to really be moving that brush Sweeping it around cleaning up those pools and then taking that pool and spreading it out over the rest of the area That's how you're going to minimize the amount of tide marks or basically like staining that you see on the surface of those flat areas while still achieving Depth of color in the recesses of the miniature that you're aiming for with the wash the other thing you want to watch out for and where people will often have a bad time is Applying a wash especially an intense one to a lighter colored figure i.e. something painted Mostly white as opposed to mostly darker colors because the pigment is so weak The brighter the paint you're applying it over to the more it will stain and affect the color no matter How much you sweep it around there's just no way around it if you're going over a white or a near white like an ivory or a Very light gray that wash is going to stain the color It simply will happen because there is still going to be some amount of pigment however little dispersed over that surface if You're working over a very dark miniature or a very dark color the wash is basically going to do nothing Because the wash is so minimal in its pigment it can't have any effect on that darker color And you know if you apply a wash to a miniature primed completely in black effectively nothing happens So your best case scenario for a miniature where a wash makes sense is one with a lot of recesses a lot of Detail that's in sort of a mid or neutral color something like a mid to bright red or a mid to bright blue Those kinds of things a mid to bright brown That's often going to show you some really good results Okay, so oftentimes things like hair and fur and and those sorts of elements end up being great Applications for washes where you're going to get a really stellar effect very quickly by creating a lot of depth in Between the individual small elements that are really let's face it too much of a pain in the butt to paint individually now those Upward-facing recesses that I mentioned earlier when you're applying paint on those upward-facing recesses That's where you want to swoop harder So as you're keeping that brush moving you want to be making sure that you're especially Clearing out most of the wash from that area you want a slightly enhanced staining effect up there But nothing too much more so how you apply the wash and where you end your brush and keep driving the wash to is Going to have an effect on how intense that amount of pigment that gathers Becomes so if you keep pushing the pigment down on the miniature into the deep recesses You know in between a belt and a shirt as opposed to up on top of a shoulder you're going to get a lot better results Once you've put the wash on there You want to let it dry for at least a few minutes if you are impatient. Hey I often am don't worry You can get out a hairdryer or something similar just blow the hairdryer over at boom You can get that wash nice and dry plenty fast You don't want it to be too strong use a low setting and obviously low heat. You don't want to melt your miniature And because you don't want to also blow the wash everywhere and get it all out of place But that will help dry it out and cure it and it'll be ready to go You can apply multiple washes for enhanced effects So you can apply it multiple times especially to a single area to intensify the effect even increasing the amount of sort of color filtering or staining that you're doing to that area, but that could be an intentional choice there Where you want that to be more enhanced more a more true version of that color multiple washes can get you there to that effect as Always when you're then done and how the wash is cured you can then feel free to layer back up Now if you've applied it really well and swooshed and swooped and made sure that you didn't have any pooling You shouldn't have to do too much layering for a lot of miniatures It's still a good idea to then come back in with your mid-tone Or maybe your mid-tone and slightly brighter to then do the highlights that is all in my layering video You can find that linked up above if you wanted to learn more about layering post the wash process That video takes you through that Otherwise that can also be used to clean up So if you do find yourself washing an incredibly lighter color say something like ivory and you want to then restore that tone a Little bit of an ivory layer paint over the top can be used to then clean that up quickly effectively easily I Hope that really helped and gave you some better ideas about how to get more out of your washes and improve the result you get If you liked it give it a like Subscribe for additional hobby cheating. 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