Why I Think You Should Stop Washing
By this I mean: stop washing your miniatures. I’m not talking about the pre-primer de-greasing that should never be skipped, but the technique of flooding a miniature with a thin dark colour to accentuate recesses. I think this technique is a trap for inexperience painters, a dead end which will prevent or slow down their ability to paint to the level that they want. I understand that not everyone wants to progress their painting, and that’s fine. This article is for those who do.
What Is Washing
A wash is a thin (non-viscous) and transparent mix of dark paint which is liberally applied to a miniature after it has been base-coated. The paint is translucent enough that it is only visible where it has been allowed to pool. The goal is to get wash into the recesses of the model without letting it pool on flat surfaces. Most washes will also slightly darken the base colour. Yes, there are washes which lighten surfaces but for my points let’s accept that I’m referring to shading washes and not weathering washes.
Washes Aren’t Shadows
I had thought of burying my point between a boring, though accurate, list of the downsides of washes. Things like drying time, tide marks, lack of control and so on. They’re true but they can be mitigated or even completely eliminated. The fundamental problem remains because it’s the reason people use washes. A wash settles in recesses and darkens them, the deeper the recess, the greater the shading. This is fine as long as the deepest recesses are the darkest shadows on the models, which isn’t always the case.
The most obvious example of this is folds in clothing, especially long, sweeping capes and jackets artistically rippling in the breeze. Imagine a single fold on it’s own. It starts vertical and slowly curves outwards. The more it curves, the more it faces upwards until it suddenly changes direction at the fold edge so that it faces downwards where it slowly curves back to vertical. Imagine a number of similar folds and where the wash would pool. It would pool where the surface was vertical, between the peaks of the folds. The wash would be deepest where the surface is vertical, or more likely, gravity would pull it to sit slightly on top of the fold. Where the wash is deepest is where the shadows are darkest.
The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David
Let’s look at some actual folds. This is a detail from Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Socrates which I had managed to find by googling “Death of Aristotle.” I guess I’m not the only one to make that mistake.
As you can see the vertical portions of the cloth, where they move out of the shadow cast by the fold, are the same colour as the midtone and the shadow is generally darker the closer it is to the highlight, as well the highlight is lighter the closer it is to the shadow. Indeed, this strong contrast adds a tremendous amount of interest
When to Wash
Batman Miniature Game Sniggering Face Detail
Don’t get me wrong, there are uses for washes. Hopefully there’s at least a couple of people who’ve already skipped to the comments to tell me how I’m wrong if you want proof. Washes are great for enhancing texture. Fur, wood and panel lines benefit from washes. Although you could paint the darker colour over the entire area and then pick out the raised area as I did on this Batman Miniature Game Joker Clown. In this way I didn’t have to wait for a wash to dry.
Isn’t it terrible how many mistakes you notice when you enlarge an imagine of a miniature?
Basically I never wash and paint all my shadows by hand. I have no worries about my painting speed when I’m actually painting and to stop painting to let a wash dry is more likely to end my painting session rather than providing any advantage.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments, especially if you found this article helpful. I’m hoping to write a large number of them touching on very specific parts of painting to help all skill levels. For example, I think it would be useful to have a series of articles on applying highlights and shading to specific shapes.
I agree with your premise. If you solely rely on washes to do all the hard work for you – by shading, then it’s not going to be accurate. Still, for those just wanting a tabletop standard to play games with, I think it’s used to great effect.
Now, for more advanced painters, I still think washes are great. The trick, as you pointed out, is recognizing the mistakes a wash makes, and then going back in to fix it. I’ll wash something, and then come back in and blend up, or layer, where it’s wrong.
Drying times to bother me much either. I’m usually working on a handful of other things, so I set aside that piece to work on something else.
I just love washes. Sure, they have their problems, and you don’t see Golden Daemon winners using them, but with a little extra work they can still be used well.
Some good points. I have certainly seen some people getting excellent results with washing. Personally, in the time someone washes, waits for it to dry and then goes back to fix wash issues I can completed the same section of the miniature by painting in highlights and shadows.
Some texture, like panel lines, are an exception.
Washing isn’t quicker, that’s for sure!
The biggest reason I like washes is that it creates your shade. Obvious, right? But, it creates levels of shading. You have your deepest areas with the darkest color, but then it fades out the further from the recess you get. So, with one paint/wash/technique, you can achieve multiple levels of shading in one step, if done well.
That’s my big thing with it. If I were to replicate in paint what I do with a wash, I would need around 3 layers of shading blending up to the base coat. That’s of course variable, but you get the idea.
If you do it well then you create some nice shaded blending with minimal effort. You can’t slap it on there of course to do that, but it’s something you learn over time.
To each their own though. That’s the beauty of painting, it’s art and thus subjective. Every technique has value; it’s just a matter of using the right ones to convey what you want.
Yes, having the gradient that a wash provides is a benefit. It’s somewhat lost, in my opinion, if your highlighting doesn’t match the same level of blending.
My point is that the nicely gradiated shadows of a wash don’t go where shadows should go. Image a simplified shape where you have a vertical surface kick out at a 45 degree angle then turn 90 degrees to return back at a 45 degree angle and turn back into a vertical surface. Where is your wash going to go? At each 45 degree turn, right?
So, you have a shadow on top of a vertical surface at the edge where it starts turning _more_ towards the light. Due to gravity it is more on the 45 angled surface than the straight up and down surface. If anything, there should be a highlight there because the curved surface collects more light and is transitioning into a situation where it is collecting more light.
Your second shadow will be where the downwards 45 surface connects to the vertical surface. Again, this should probably be collecting more light (all concave and convex surfaces capture more light than flat surfaces) but definitely shouldn’t be a shadow.
Yes, washes will create properly positioned shadows some times but generally you are sacrificing quality for speed. I believe that the position of the highlight and shadow is more important than how well blended they are so you are sacrificing the wrong quality. Spend more time getting your shadows in the right spot and less time blending them.
I really should have made diagrams.
Thanks for the comments, btw. I really appreciate receiving them.
I totally agree with you. I don’t really like using washes either, but I’m also trying to improve my painting. Sure, washes are nice for beginner painters to get something out on the board quickly. But it’s not true to how light falls on an object. That’s probably what newer painters should learn sooner than later: light and shadows. I’m just now starting to get the hang of it, and it makes sense one you get your head around it. And I like painting my shadows in by hand. Gives me more control and I can intensify the shadows as much as I want depending on the effect I want to portray. Thanks for your article! I hope more painters will read it and think twice about washes.
Thanks, I agree