I put the washes on heavy so it gives a lot of darkness in the crevices, but it does give an overall stain to your basecoats. That's where highlighting comes in. I will then go over the raised areas again with the base color, and then over those again in a slightly lighter color. This compensates for the staining of your basecoats from the wash.

But if you don't want to do that, they look pretty good even stained brown/black. Soldiers get dirty in war, so it kind of works.

Here are the Battle Grenadiers. I think the blue fatigues and green panzerschreck will look good with a heavy black wash. Not a fan of the goggles though, the rim's too thin and the lenses bulging out of it. I much prefer the Gunnner's goggles. Not sure about the yellow I painted it with, as well.

Looks good keep em coming!

 Love your color choices, nice and bold!

vengeance000 said:

Thanks, I just never wanted a mass of grayish soldiers. It might be realistic, but not very fun, and I want to be able to quickly discern the different squads.

And finally, the base colours for the Laser Grenadiers! Pretty happy with this one, though I hope to differentiate the armour from the fatigues a bit more with the highlights, and also add some blue laser glow after I've washed it.

And that concludes the base colours for the core set infantry. Time to take the plunge and bring out the washes........

Badab Black, Devlan Mud, Ogryn Flesh. SoRice hooked me up with these wonderful washes, and I've finally put them to use. It was a joy applying them to my allied troops, much simpler and trouble-free than I anticipated. They really add a lot of realism to the figures and help bring up the detail in the sculpts. I was afraid they were going to darken the figures too much, and make away with my painstaking base colour work, but it was not the case. The original colours are still there, darker, sure, but I guess the highlighting process is supposed to bring them back up.

However, I'm so pleased with how the models turned out with the wash that now I'm kind of afraid to apply the highlights to them and ruin the effect or something. They almost look good enough as they are...

Hey,

The washes are looking good, curious to see how you highlight with the enamel paints too!

Everything looks good...though, I will say that I am not too hot on the Battle Grenadiers color scheme. It seems too...toy-like, I guess.

Bravester said:

Hopefully they will be more to your liking once I've applied the wash, which should dull the colours a bit.

Personally I love the colours you've chosen.  I especially like what you use for the BBQ squad.  It's exactly what I had in mind for my Hell Boys.  What did you use for the colour?  I was just planning on mixing a little brown into GW Blood Red paint, but I'd love to hear what you used for that colour.

 I would recommend Army Painter Dip for these, it will really make them "pop"

felkor said:

I'm using enamels, so all I can say is that colour is Revell "Mat 37". I also think it's the best colour choice I made, really like the look of my beloved BBQ.

Thanks.  I'm using acrylics.  I ended up using GW Blood Red and slowly mixed in a little Bestial Brown until I got the colour I was looking for, and that seems to have worked for me.

What are your thoughts on using enamels rather than acrylics?  The only enamels I've used are MIG Production Effects (Rainmarks, Rust, Grease & Oil, etc.)  - they seem to work pretty well, although they're a bit stinkier and need paint thinner instead of water.  Otherwise I haven't noticed that much of a difference.

I don't really see a reason to use enamels, if you have acess to acrylics. Enamels are toxic, so you're always breathing in those fumes, plus it's better to dillute them in paint thinner before using them, so you have another foul-smelling chemical by your side, and to finish it off, you need the paint thinner to clean your brushes which I think really decreases their lifespan. They don't really seem to be worth the bother.