To wash or not to wash? that is the question.

Make the jump to oils. A couple small tubes will last forever. Titanium white and burnt sienna for caucasian flesh mixtures. Yeah, they take longer to dry but it's worth the wait. If you add a little thinner to the mix, drying time will decrease. The blended effects are superior to enamels and the pigment is finer. Since you determine how thin you want the paint, you have more control. There' sno pesky separation of pigment to the bottom of the bottle, either.
I've seen some superb result with Vallejo/Andre acrylics as well, as good or better than any oils I've seen.

yeah i have been trying the wash and drybrush technique on 1/35 faces and i am just not that happy with the results. There must be a lot more control using the "pro" method. Question can you use enamels like artists oils?

yes, of coarse.

i use washes on hands and if u do on the face, use an extremely thin wash so it just runs through.

if you dont own a copy of the ModelMasters guide book get one and read the section about the artist's method of figure painting with washes then you will know what im talking about. I follow what they say in the book precisely.

1. paint the area with MM skin tone light base
2. paint the low or shadow areas with skin tone shadow
3. paint the prominent areas with a mixture of 1 part semi gloss white and 4 parts skin tone light base
4. with a size 3 brush (Model Master's Size) blend the low and prominent areas together with a little bit of paint thinner.
5. add to the cheeks, temples, nose, and under the eyes some skin tone warm tint
6. and finally blend together the colors with a size 3 brush and thinner.

the washes in this case are the steps including thinner........(DUHHH)

In my humble opinion, the only time a wash will ever touch one of my figures is if I want to represent chain mail, braided decorative cord and MAYBE on the boot laces. On a face, I paint a flesh tone undercoat, wait for it to dry completely (i.e. 24 hrs.) and then shadow using small touches of burnt sienna. Titanium white usually works for highlites, but use sparingly so as to avoid a pasty, colourless appearance on the figure. Here's an example I recently completed. This guy is in 90 mm, but the techniques still works even on 1/35 figures.


You can always adjust the color and valus to give a more or less weathered appearence, but that's where the trial and error comes in. Try it out sometime. The neat thing about oil paint is you can always wipe it off with a Q-tip and thinner if you don't like it. Good luck!

QUOTE: Originally posted by charlesw I have been doing the wash technique for a while now but im not sure if its worth it. they say practice makes perfect, but too much practice and no advance in performance just pisses me off. and not to mention the fact that its nearly impossible to do the wash technique to figures with the head connected to the torso already from the manufacturer.

What are you calling a wash? How much paints are you using for this? There should be just enough for capillary action to tint the deeper recesses where there'd be shadows from over head light.
First, you should paint figures from the inside out. Flesh, shirt, pants, jacket, in that order.
Second, apply your thinned paint sparingly where you want more shadow. Use a pretty fine brush for this, no larger than a 0 and 5/0 or 10/0 is even better. There should be relatively little paint transfered to the figure. If it's running down on the torso, you probably used too much.
As I said in my previous post, try going to oils and blending.

I have been doing the wash technique for a while now but im not sure if its worth it. they say practice makes perfect, but too much practice and no advance in performance just pisses me off. and not to mention the fact that its nearly impossible to do the wash technique to figures with the head connected to the torso already from the manufacturer.

If you're just starting out and you are using the figure to enhance a vehicle, this is a quick way of doing a face. As I'm learning form my mentors, it's much better the use oils or acrylics and blend shadows and highlights than using a wash and drybrush technique. This is more difficult and time consimming, but results in a much better figure.
I go from a mid flesh tone, mixed from titanium white and burnt sienna and adjust the ratios to get the shading/highligting I need.

It depends on the effect you want to accomplish, I suppose. If you want your figures to look dirty or worn out, you could try using only dry-brushed dark shades after applying your base color. If you don't like the effect, experiment a little, comparing different figures painted in different styles. I hope this helps.

Paul

I don't like to use washes on faces.

I prefer to basecoat the whole skin in the darkest shade, and work my way up highlighting by adding a brighter skin color to the base color, using thin layers and covering a smaller area each time.