Painting Miniatures 5: Washing and Dipping

a. Advantages and Disadvantages

In general, a wash is a layer of transparent color painted over a base color scheme.  The wash tends to accumulate in deep areas, creases, and pits; and so the transparent color accumulates and therefore looks darker in these dark areas.  This effect simulates shadows, or body hair, or dirt, and can effectively highlight protruding areas.

You can simulate the effect of a wash using pre-colored varnish from the hardware store; this is referred to as "The Minwax Dip Method" because of Minwax's very convenient line of "Polyshades" colored varnishes available.  Expert miniature painters consider this to be cheating, and you will not win awards with the Minwax treatment; but if you're just trying to make something look nice on the table for game night, then who cares?  Minwax polyurethane varnish provides the added benefit that it is an extremely durable finish, and will protect your paint job (and miniature) better than spray lacquer alone.

b. Washes

In theory, you can create a wash by taking some dark paint, then adding a paint additive known as a 'flow reducer' to it (try this on the palette, not in a bottle), which should cause the paint particles to drop out of their suspension, and therefore settle in creases on the model.

In practice, I have never gotten this to work well with paint.  I used a dark dark red to create a wash for a monster, but the wash didn't settle too well, and it just looked like the monster was covered with rivulets of dark gore.  It's an interesting look (creepy as heck!), and I just decided to go with it rather than repaint the whole thing, but it isn't really what I was hoping for.  Adding a bad wash at the end could mean that you need to repaint the whole model all over again.

You can also buy ready-made washes, but they're hard to find.  I don't have experience with these.

Many experts do something similar 'by hand' and without flow reducer; they dilute some dark paint tremendously with water (again, on the palette) and only paint a very light amount (almost dry-brush it) into the creased areas which they want to darken.  Then they let that dry, and repeat the process several times.  Each individual application is nearly invisible, but the color slowly accumulates.  This can be very effective, but it is also very time-consuming, painting those areas over and over and over again.

c. Dipping

Once your players defeat the giant spider, they are not going to be so thrilled fighting an identical giant spider; you will want refreshing new monsters for the next session, and that means more miniatures.  I admire the talented artists who create stunningly realistic color and shade effects on the tiny models we have; but I also run the game, and I have lots of jobs to do in order to prepare for game day.  I use the Minwax dip method a lot, and it helps me finish lots and lots of miniatures in my very limited spare time.  I realize it's a cheap shortcut, but it's a sacrifice in quality and craftsmanship I'm willing to make at this point in my life.

I mentioned before that the popular choice for this is the Minwax Polyshades line.  Polyshades is especially convenient because it is available in small half-pint cans (no need to buy the big quart can).  I will eventually want the surface of the miniature to have a completely flat non-shiny surface, so I use Satin finish varnish rather than Gloss; with the thin layer I paint on, it usually winds up shiny anyway.  The color recommended most often for this is "Antique Walnut," which adds a brown color that works very well with skin tones.  But for robots, subterranean monsters, and numerous undead creatures, I use the dark gray color provided by "Tudor;" be forewarned that Tudor can drain a lot of vividness from your paint scheme.  Do not use "Black," because it's like dipping your miniature in tar; no light nor color will escape.

I put my miniatures on little wooden disc bases; the disc is sized to the character's "personal space" for combat purposes, and I think the wood material looks a little classier than a black plastic base.  I used to get these laser-cut discs from Gale Force Nine, but Gale Foce Nine stopped selling them, and now I have to get them from craft suppliers.  Fortunately, 1-inch, 2-inch, 3-inch, and 1/2-inch laser-cut plywood discs are not too difficult to find from craft suppliers.  I bring this up now because it makes sense to attach the wooden disc before you varnish the miniature; the varnish enhances the appearance of the wood, as you might expect (the varnish is intended for wooden surfaces, after all).  I gently but firmly pop the miniature off the pedestal.  I attach the miniature to the wooden disc base using cyanoacrylate glue (I discussed cyanoacrylate glue in "Assembling" above).  Then I glue the miniature's new wooden disc base back onto the pedestal with the Duco cement (also discussed in "Assembling").

Dipping is where that working pedestal really comes in handy, because you do not want to touch the wet varnish, even if you're wearing painting gloves.  The pedestal also eliminates the concern of where to put your miniature while the varnish dries: on the pedestal, the varnish will not stick the miniature to another surface, nor will the varnish pool and leave a "wafer" of dry varnish attached to your base; the pedestal keeps the miniature suspended, so the miniature dries virtually in mid-air.

Although they call it "dipping," most people who do the "Minwax dip" do not actually submerge their miniature in varnish.  Instead, they brush the varnish on.  Me, I usually submerge the miniature and brush the excess varnish off.  Again, it's all about the time savings.

Minwax polyurethane varnish is oil-based, and very difficult to clean out of brushes, even if you use the toxic and volatile solvents required.  I use another shortcut with the brushes when dipping: I don't even try to clean it out of the brush.  For the dip stage, I use extremely cheap kids' watercolor-style synthetic-bristle plasic-handle paintbrushes, and when I'm done putting the Minwax on a batch of miniatures, I throw the cheap brush away rather than trying to clean it.  Yes, it's wasteful, but comparing the time required to clean out the brush, considering the toxic and flammable solvents, and the limited benefits of cleaning out the brush (that brush is never going to be as good as when you pulled it out of the box), I don't feel so bad tossing out a twenty-five-cent plastic brush; if I use that brush to varnish 12 miniatures in a batch, the cost of that brush amortizes down to about two cents per miniature.

Painting Miniatures 4: Painting

This is the fun part: literally playing with color.  But wait; first we need to get our stuff ready.

a. Equipment

Back when I was painting polystyrene model airplanes, I would use Testors oil-based enamels.  Today most people paint miniatures with water-based acrylic paints.  Your painting equipment (brushes, palette, water jar, etc.) will reflect the nature of your paints.

Obviously you will need brushes.  You should be able to find these at your friendly local gaming store (FLGS), or you may be able to find these at an art supply store.  You will want some range of brushes.  Your largest brush will probably be a zero (0) size brush, and you will want some smaller brushes, until you can paint the tiny dot of color that is the colored part of a miniature warrior's eye (I use a 20/0 size brush).

You will need a small water container to rinse off your brushes.  An old (clean) squat salsa jar should work fine.

I use an old "coaster" CD for a paint palette.  When I'm done, I can rinse it and use steel wool or a scrub pad to scrape off any dried paint.

You will want an absorbent rag to soak up excess paint and pull dirty water out of your brushes.  I use a ragged t-shirt.

Back in Assembling, I told you about using a polyethylene drop cloth to catch drops of glue.  You want to use that when painting, to catch drops of paint.

Good lighting is extremely helpful.  I recommend a nice bright full-spectrum or daylight-type desk lamp; I got a cheap swing-arm desk lamp with a daylight-type compact fluorescent bulb, and it works pretty well for me.

Having a thick pin (like a T-pin or a hat pin) is helpful if your paint gets clogged in a squeeze-bottle nozzle; you can poke the clog open with the pin.  DO NOT try to squeeze the paint harder and harder through the clogged nozzle, or it will squirt all over and the paint may be water-based, but WATER WILL NOT GET IT ALL OUT.

Finally, wear clothes that you don't mind accidentally squirting paint on.  Yes, I know you'll be careful, but don't tempt fate.

b. Paints

Miniatures paints are quite different from other acrylic or latex paints.  Miniatures paints are typically very highly pigmented opaque paints with a very thin (non-viscous) body, unlike the comparatively viscous latex paints you use to paint your walls, or the creamy acrylic paints you use to paint your canvas.

Miniatures paints will either come in little squeeze bottles to squeeze paint out of, or little jars to dip brushes into.  I mix colors a lot on the palette, so I prefer the squeeze bottles, which keep me from contaminating my paint containers with whatever's on my brush.

I generally prefer Acrylicos Vallejo paints, either the Model Color or Game Color lines; they come in the squeeze bottles in a wide range of colors, including both bright hues and subdued shades.  Many other professional miniature painters also use Acrylicos Vallejo paints.

I have also started experimenting with Reaper's Master Series Paints, because they gave me some for free.  They seem okay so far.

c. Colors

Miniatures paints aren't cheap, so you probably can't afford to get the entire 200-color line of paints made by any particular paint manufacturer.  You have to pick and choose.

If you're just going to get your feet wet (so to speak; don't paint your feet) with a small number of miniatures, you can probably just get the colors you will need for those miniatures; so if you have an olive-green troll, a gray frost wolf, and a bright orange fire elemental, you can get just those colors (plus eye colors, accessory colors (does the troll have a brown wooden club?) and other shade-variations to make the monster look more realistic (maybe the frost wolf has a black nose and a white underbelly)) and you're done.

If you're planning to embark on a journey of painting miniatures, consider going the Crayola-box route and get a basic assortment:
The primary and secondary colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
Black, white, and a medium brown.

It is also really helpful to have certain colors for fantasy miniatures:
At least one skin tone (appropriate to the kind of people are you painting miniatures of).
At least one "dirt".
A steely metal paint for weapons and armor.
If you paint more than one skeleton, some kind of bone color.
Some kind of wood-tone tan.

The familiar rule of thumb is that if you use more than 3 colors per miniature, you're overdoing it.  That may be appropriate for certain monsters (like lions, tigers, and bears), but let's imagine a typical armed warrior miniature for a moment:
The warrior will have some skin exposed; even if this warrior is dressed for winter, it will likely have an exposed face.  That means at least one color for skin tone.
The warrior is armed; maybe with a bow, maybe with a sword, maybe wood, maybe metal.  Whatever it is, that's another color.
The warrior is clothed; maybe cloth, maybe suede, maybe animal hide.  Whatever it is, that's at least 1 more color, for a total of 3 colors.
But what of the warrior's hair?  That's one more color.  What about the warrior's accessories, like a belt, boots, a pack, etc.?  That's at least one more color.  What about eyes?  That could be another color.  And then there's the ground the warrior is standing on.

d. Mixing colors

With this theoretical paint color wheel, combining two colors from the edge creates a muted color somewhere between the points inside the circle, not a vibrant color on the edge.  

Mixing colors can be a challenge, because some colors are just more potent on the palette than others:
White is usually pretty reliable; but black can often swallow up any other color you mix with it.
Red, orange, and green are also usually very potent; mix something with red, and you just get a variation of red; and so on with orange and green.  Some of this may be psychological, but some of this may be due to the nature of the chemical pigments involved, and the nature of transparent and opaque color.
If you have a bright primary red paint, but you want a subtle red color, you can mix the two colors adjacent to red on the color wheel (orange and violet) for a more muted and perhaps fashionable red.  And so on with the other colors; of course blue and yellow make green, but maybe blue paint and yellow paint mix to create a different green than your straight-out-of-the-paint-bottle green.  Consider the (theoretical) paint color wheel; at the center is gray, and if you mix colors from the edges, you don't follow the edge of the circle, you generally draw a straight line through some of the grayish interior.

e. Technique

With the warrior, his exposed skin was the deepest area; with the swarm of beetles at the bottom left, it was the dirt underneath the beetles.  With the lions, I went for an all-over fur color.

The general rule for painting is to paint the deepest (most difficult to isolate) areas first, then to put down subsequent layers until you get to the extremities.

Closeup of the warrior and lioness

Following this general rule, and using our warrior example above (in Colors), the deepest area will be the skin, so we start with the skin tone.  Then we see that our warrior has a long coat over some trousers, with trousers tucked into boots; working from deepest layers outward, let's paint trousers, then boots and accessories, then the long coat.  The warrior's long hair drapes over the clothes, so now we paint the hair.  Finally, we paint the warrior's weapon.  And now I notice that I didn't color the warrior's eyes; but I have a really thin brush for painting tiny dots for eyes.

For animals and naturalistic monsters, I usually lay down a base color, and layer general shades, and finally work on details like eyes, teeth, claws, etc.

f. Skin Tones

I've never seen a dragon, so I can't tell what looks like an abnormal color on a dragon.  I've seen lots of orange cats, and I know that the orange color on a cat is very unlike the orange color on a tangerine, but I wouldn't be too disturbed to see a tangerine-orange paint job on a cat miniature.  However, human skin tones are another matter.

Skin tones may be your biggest challenge, because we look at skin all the time, and it is a survival advantage to know what abnormal skin looks like: if someone looks pale, flushed, inflamed, jaundiced, bruised, nauseated, ashen, unshaved, dirty, scarred, etc., we notice it.  Trying to add diversity by adjusting a basic "peach" skin tone to look just a little Mediterranean (or Asian, or anything else) can be tricky, but very rewarding.  Practice, practice, practice!  Consider different paints to mix in.  Study reference images and compare your results to the effect you wanted to achieve.

g. Dry-Brushing

"Dry-brush" is a popular technique where you remove almost all the paint from the brush, and brush what's left onto a specific area.  Try to imagine removing dust using a damp sponge: you want just enough moisture to pick up the dust, without having so much moisture to leave a puddle.  It creates a translucent effect kind of like shading with pastel or charcoal.  This technique is most used with highlights (very effective with hair), burn marks, and other small shaded areas.

h. Washes

If you do choose to use a wash, this will change the appearance of the underlying colors.  Generally, a dark wash will make underlying colors appear darker.  Also, For example, a orange-brown wash will "fight" with an underlying purple or blue, causing it to look more reddish or even grayish.  A dark gray wash can almost drain the color out of your paint job.  Accordingly, if you plan to use an all-over wash, prepare by making your underlying colors brighter and more vibrant than you intend them to look when they are finished.