All Washed Up - Inks vs. Washes

If there's one thing that can be said for the Games Workshop hobbies, it's that they pretty much built the painting side of the miniature wargaming industry.

Were other games encouraging their players to paint their miniatures? Sure.

Were people painting their gaming miniatures before GW came around? Of course.

Were any of those other companies as successful at promoting painting as a sister act to gaming life? Not a chance.

In the world of gaming there may be better paints, and there may be better brushes (and hey, over the past ten years we've even seen the advent of pre-painted miniatures), but when you consider the marketing machine that is Games Workshop, there is no one who has done more to further the technique and standards of miniature painting.

I remember sitting in 8th grade study hall, my friends and I mesmerized by the 'Eavy Metal spreads in that month's White Dwarf. It was the ultimate nerd-porn, and we all wanted to paint like Mike McVey and (holy crap!) Ivan Bartleet. And why shouldn't we? White Dwarf trotted out the best of the best in painting every month, gave tips in the 'Eavy Metal editorial page, and made it look so easy. And that was kind of the point.

The genius of it all was that they presented these exquisite paint jobs in such a way as to make it seem like anyone could do it- a little drybrushing, a little highlighting, an ink wash here and there, and you could paint like the big boys. Simple, right? Well...not really, but that doesn't stop GW from pushing the dream - and not only pushing the dream, but making it appear easier to attain...

Which brings us to the new washes - the latest quickstep to painting greatness.

I like inks, I grew up learning to paint with them and never had any of the problems using them that I've heard people complain about.  So how do the new washes stack up? Better than I expected, but...

My first impression just looking at them was that they were surprisingly thin mixtures- they do pack a decent amount of pigment into such a watery solution, but how they have a binder with such a low viscosity is beyond me. This was both a good and a bad thing. Good because it flowed nicely, and bad because in small areas it flowed too nicely and went into places I didn't want it to. There's a bit of a catch 22 there because in order for it to pool nicely you have to lay down enough for it to collect, but the same amount made it spill into unwanted areas if the target zone was too small. Don't fool yourselves into thinking that this is something that won't take practice using - just like the inks, it takes moderation.

The other thing I realized before even touching brush to wash? The colors.
Okay, eight pots, eight colors- not bad. However, when you stop to think about it you'll soon realize that four of those colors are basically variations on brown or black. The ink set had nine colors, three of those being a very specific brown variation or black - with the wash browns/blacks there is little color difference in the actual applications between them.

Here's the wash breakdown on those four colors: Sepia = yellow, Devlan Mud= brown, Ogryn Flesh = chestnut/orange (the ink set had a separate orange and chestnut), and Badab Black = black.

Fine, I get it - the colors are all there, but did they all have to be so drab?

The ink sets were vibrant. They "popped". These not so much. When I finally used them they did do shading pretty well, but the drabness really made them sink into the background of the paint job. With inks you could add a depth to colors and make them richer with each glaze, but with these they just added more...shading I guess. I don't really know how to describe it.

Like I said, the shading was pretty good. Definitely best used on wide, deep folds like on cloth, or on pronounced ridges like Space Marine armor. Anywhere that a lot of the wash can collect is going to look good. Small details were horrible though - I'll definitely be sticking to my ink/matte medium mix on faces, although Orc players are going to love these for orc faces/skin where it worked fantastically. They will probably be great for Tyranid players as well.

One thing that I didn't expect to find was that these are great for tinting other colors. Where inks would 9 times out of 10 just saturate a base color unless you diluted them enough, the washes are really good at laying down just the right amount of pigment to slightly change the original base colors with out destroying them.

This is something that they should have been teaching in GW store demos, and had up on the website. Just seeing how the washes collect on white undercoated models (which is how they demoed the washes to me) tells me nothing about how they will react on actual painted figures. The tinting properties are pretty sweet, and definitely warrant some experimentation (a thin Sepia wash over the final highlight on a human skin tone is fantastic for bringing some warmth back to the chalkiness that can sometimes happen there).

There is way more to discuss than I've written here, but overall I'd say that between inks and washes (for me) it's a tie. Are the washes easier to use than inks? Definitely. Are they the saving grace for painting that GW promotes them as? No. They still take practice. They still take experimentation. In a perfect world we'd have the inks and washes to complement each other, because they actually do complement each other really well.

But, no - the new washes will not make you a better painter. Just a painter with a new tool.

I was going to put some pictures up, but my camera's focus is way off for some reason. As soon as I can get it sorted, I'll post some photos.