Highlighting after dipping, washing?

[Mendax]

Still new to painting here, and though I'd like to work on some advanced techniques down the road, my chief objective right now is to field decent-looking units on the table. Up until now, I've base-coated, added shading with homemade washes, and then dry-brushed.

I'm looking at the GW washes and/or dipping, which appear to work extremely well. My question is whether most people bother highlighting after washing/dipping, and if so, if they do this by dry-brushing. Reading posts here and elsewhere, it sounds like people wash/dip, but don't do any highlighting after, though maybe I'm interpreting things wrong.

Also, in regards to the GW washes, how many coats are generally needed? Is it one coat applied with a big brush, and should the brush be loaded with wash, or are layers applied lightly?

[Jyggdrasil]

I always highlight after dipping. Using a dip moves the figures towards a darker monochrome, which highlighting helps to offset.

[mathieu]

Not mentioning that, as good as it looks considering the little effort required, dipping does not leave large surfaces clean. Highlighting allows to tidy them up.

[manymoles]

Still new to painting here, and though I'd like to work on some advanced techniques down the road, my chief objective right now is to field decent-looking units on the table. Up until now, I've base-coated, added shading with homemade washes, and then dry-brushed.

That's a great way to start into painting. Also it is one method to paint an army really quick. You got all you want: Color, shades & higlights. Many gamers don't do much more on their minis. With a good color choice the whole army fits together and will look great on the battlefield. Nobody will see the small details while gaming at 1 feet or more distance.


I'm looking at the GW washes and/or dipping, which appear to work extremely well. My question is whether most people bother highlighting after washing/dipping, and if so, if they do this by dry-brushing. Reading posts here and elsewhere, it sounds like people wash/dip, but don't do any highlighting after, though maybe I'm interpreting things wrong.

The "classic" dipping don't use highlights after the wash. You paint all base colors (brighter ones work better) and dip your mini afterwards in the dipping-wash. A pot with a greater hole works better (originally woodstain was used for this) and shake the recesses gently off. Finished

If you will do some highlight I think it's better done before dipping your mini. In this case you will go for some extreme highlights as the dipping medium will darken it afterwards.


Also, in regards to the GW washes, how many coats are generally needed? Is it one coat applied with a big brush, and should the brush be loaded with wash, or are layers applied lightly?

I use them in both ways ;) A heavy undiluted wash for shading and/or detail definition. In most cases I start then to work out the highlights. After all highlightning is done I used to use some medium or heavy diluted wash to finish it off. This also hides some streaks from layering as side effect. If you apply with diluted washes you can do as much layers of wash as you need (until it looks done).

One example of heavy washing are nails or teeth (on trolls): I start of with a basecoat of scorched brown. Then a undiluted wash of Badab Black/devlan Mud (1:1) to get the borders right (it acts also as dark lining). Then I do some highlights through adding bleached bone. As I'm done I wash again with Devlan Mud, this time diluted, with one or more layers. Depends on dilution grade. Afterwards I do some final highlights with bleached bone and white. To finish of I use a extrem diluted wash of gryphonne sepia.

That way you gain really good looking "animal" nails as I prefer them. You can do lesser steps of course but that depends on how far (or good) you want to paint your minis

[Tevesh]

With washes, I prefer a small brush with multiple layers so I can direct which way it dries and therefore how well it looks.

But then again, I sometimes completely ignore this, such as drowning Drago/MOW DC in Devlan Mud to give them a very gritty look.

[Panhead]

I'm looking at the GW washes and/or dipping, which appear to work extremely well. My question is whether most people bother highlighting after washing/dipping, and if so, if they do this by dry-brushing. Reading posts here and elsewhere, it sounds like people wash/dip, but don't do any highlighting after, though maybe I'm interpreting things wrong.


An optimal solution for you would be to highlight before the wash.

Ideally, this is achieved by drybrushing. First, you take your base colour and put down a flat coat. With foundations this is normally one coat, so it's good to start with them.

After doing that, choose a colour that is similar, but lighter than your base colour. This could be a mix of the base + white, or it could be another colour in a range. You take this colour, whatever it is, and drybrush it over the surface of the base colour.

Try to get an even coat, but don't over-do it, as the wash will help with this.

Now, you take whichever wash suits your needs, and apply it to all the areas of the same colour. I like to suggest using the same "colour" wash as your base, but you can get some interesting effects with other colours too (I use the purple wash on red for example).

Before the wash dries, try to see where it will pool, and take some off if needed. It won't always pool, but keep an eye on it.


Now, if you want to take it a step further (or don't like drybrushing), you throw edge highlighting into the mix.

Before the wash, but after the drybrush, do a quick highlight with a slightly lighter colour than your drybrush. It's not a lot of work, but looks pretty darn nice!


I don't have many good photos of the effect... but, well... for sake of example: Here (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v208/Hazmat_captain_ZERO/Ammobunker/asdfgokd012.jpg). Those guys were done with a base of Orkhide Shade, followed by a coat of Snot Green. Then, I did an edge highlight with Golden Yellow, with a wash of Thraka Green.

Not counting the wash drying time, the base colour took under an hour for those five guys.

To compare, the Bone was done in two steps: Dneb stone followed by a Devlan Mud wash


A bit long, but I hope that helps a little! The washes are ideal for a good tabletop standard without the need for a million layers :)

[Exeter]

I think I have some info that can help. This is based off my personal experiences with dips and gw washes. I dont know about any one else's techniques and how they work. If I had to guess, I would say dont highlight before a dip because the highlight gets shaded the dip's tone and will have funny look to it. I'll give an example in a minute.

This link is to my dipped Cygnar (http://gallery.livetocrush.net/index.php?cid=3)

:eek::eek: People always critisize me when I say I dipped my army...

The majority of the figs shown were dipped or washed.
I used gw foundations mordian blue, mecharite red, astronomican grey, and dheneb stone. The dheneb was used on the flagstone bases.

Basically, I put a solid coat of the foundation colours over a white/black prime coat as seen here. (http://www.livetocrush.net/gallery/images/warmachine/cryx/glowingcryx/deathripper-prime3.jpg)It took 1-2 coats of watered down foundation to get a good solid coat. I painted the metals with reaper adamantium black, then I gave them a highlight of gw chainmail.

Then I gave them a dip in armypainter dark tone dip. The groupshot pics in my cygnar gallery show a before and after dip of the ironclad and lancer. It also shows how straight gw chainmail looks over the lancers prime coat versus the ironclads metals (gw chainmail over reaper adamantium black).

Ok, so after I dipped, I went and highlighted. This was a 2 stage process using the foundation colour and a highlight. The highlight colors were gw mordian blue+white, gw blood red, vallejo flat aluminum, and gw mithril silver, respectively. I kept the highlights simple as they looked better the more extreme they were.

The only figure washed was the charger and that was done with 2 coats of gw badab black. To my eye, it's hard to tell the difference between the final products.

Why I dont think highlighting prior to dipping will work: You can see on the Journeyman warcaster's shoulders the way the dip left a nice diffused shade down the shoulder pad. You can also see where I highlighted (the red one). I think if you did highlight before hand, the highlight would have that same shading on it and it would become somewhat lost. You would probably have to rehighlight a stroke after dipping to bring it back out again. It seems counterintuitive to shade a highlight with such a strong shade. Dont get me wrong, I've done that before and it works, these just werent the right colours for that method.

Anyway, after highlight, I gave everyone 2-3 coats of dullcoat and was done.

And thats how I did it. I'm not the be all end all here. I'm just a guy with a brush. :D I get a lot of positive comments on the way these guys look. On the smaller guys like the black 13th, I would have prefered to use gw washes, but I didnt realize that until after I dipped them. The dip can eat small details if our not careful.

Note: Laddermore's cape and Stryker's robe were painted the conventional way after dipping.