How to Wash Bright Red

Hey, what’s up? The battle report is underway, but it’s not going to drop until tomorrow because of editing. Sorry about that. I thought I’d be able to edit today, but it got away from me. I almost caught my backyard on fire—had to deal with that.

Time to do some hobbying.

Let’s get some painting done. I started to reach for Nuln Oil, but now that I think about it, Nuln Oil is not the right wash to use here. The black will desaturate that red airbrush work. Let me try again—Army Painter Mid Brown Quick Shade wash. We’re going to come in with this.

We definitely need a wash because there’s so many of them. A wash is going to make all the details pop in a way that’s actually doable at scale. Let’s test it here.

I want to use as light a wash as I can get away with that still brings these details out. I used to use these quick shade washes a lot—they were the only Army Painter product I used until I found out about speed paints.

Just being careful around this white, making sure we get all the cracks. There are a ton of cracks and panel lines in this Dusk armor that would otherwise be a total pain to paint.

Cleaning Up Excess

The whole trick with washes, especially over bright airbrush work, is managing the excess. See right in here, there’s a little too much paint. I did that on purpose to show you—come in, clean your brush out, and use it to suck up and wick away the extra paint. I just have a paper towel a little out of frame to dry the brush on.

You can come back in and wick it off so there’s not a huge glob of paint pooling up.

The Result

Let me show you just how much that wash adds. These two I just washed. This one’s dry, this one’s still a little wet. We’ve kept all the vibrance and the brightness of our airbrush red.

Because of that brown wash—and we didn’t use a black one—it’s in all the cracks, it picks out the detail, but it didn’t take away any of our bright red. We’re still just as bright as the unwashed model. The highlights just have a little more depth.

So there’s your tip for today: don’t wash red with black. Use brown.

I’ll see you tomorrow when hopefully this battle report is finally ready. Thanks for watching.