Another Miniature Painting Question

[Andrew D. Gable]

OK, all ye miniature-painting pros, I have a question. I've heard about the technique of applying watered-down inks over the painted regions to shade. How far should one water down the ink prior to its application? So far, I've dunked the brush in my waterpot for 10 seconds, and even after using a papertowel to dry the region, a bit of black still shows over my paint. It's filled the crevices nicely, though.

Just for reference, I'm using Citadel inks on Citadel Bleached Bone color.

As another aside, would you use black or brown ink on this paint (an off-white color)?

 

[Gospog]

Well, first of all, this question clearly belongs in the mini's forum.

To answer your questions, in my experience a 2:1 mix of water to ink works well in most cases.

But that's assuming you've highlighted up to white, and are blending.

If you are just shading, and this is your first step of shading, I would use straight ink.

As for your paints, I've found that brown and chestnut ink both shade bleached bone nicely.

If you are trying to paint actual bone (a skeleton, for example), try mixing brown and yellow ink and applying it to white paint. Dry-brush with bleached bone.

I hope you find some of this useful. Good luck.

 

[Fuliginus]

I usually wash out my paints by about 4 or 5 drops of water to 1 drop of paint on a pallette-like surface. You want the paint to be washed out nicely yet still able to easily tell what color it is.

After your ink wash dries, lightly dry brush over the high spots with a slightly lighter shade of your base color. This covers over sny of your ink on surface areas as well as giving the figure more depth.

There is a fairly nice painting guide on the Wargames Foundry's web site.