Guide for beginners: Panel wash

Panel Lining

Adding color to the recessed details of your models brings a sense of depth and reveals details that would get drowned out in small scale.

Some choose to do this with pencils or markers, others paint. Some use a very thinned down paint which easily runs into crevasses all by itself. This thin paint is called a wash. We can make a wash with any kind of paint but due to interaction with the base coat the most common choice is Enamel.

As we already know, enamel paint does not react with either acrylic or lacquer. This makes it perfect for washing our model's details.

Let's look at how it works:

We start with enamel paint. Any brand is fine. Oil paint can also be used but be aware that the dry time will be days if not weeks. If using oil paint we will top coat with a lacquer to speed the drying time and prevent smudging of the colors.

Next we thin the paint until it is almost transparent. We can test the consistency br dragging the paint up the side of the container it is in, if the paint does not cover completely it is thin enough.

Now we apply the wash to our part. The thin paint will naturally flow through the recesses  and self level therein. If we are doing a clean build and want to be as accurate as possible we will use a thin pointed brush to apply our wash, a 2/0 or 3/0 is ideal.

It helps to gloss coat the parts before we do our wash for two reasons.

1: The clear gloss will protect our base paint layer from the enamel thinner.

2: The surface of the model will have slightly more friction allowing the paint to run only into the recesses rather than spilling everywhere.

Now we clean up any excess with a cotton bud used a bit like dry brushing. We apply very little pressure because we do not want the bud to pull paint out of the recess, only the excess on top of the panels.

As you can see the part now shows much more detail. There are many ways to line our panels but a wash is by far the fastest. If we want to weather our model we can simply be a bit sloppy with our wash, the excess paint can be streaked over the surface to create a filter effect!

I almost always use this "Heavy Wash" technique on my wethered builds because it quickly builds up a nice random grime effect.

Just remember to be careful about where your wash runs, enamel thinner will destroy bandai plastic if you are not careful.

Some common sense advice on washes:

Always use gloss clear coats and never allow wash to dry inside joints or where parts come together.

Do washes at a time where you will have time to clean them up right away. 15 minutes is plenty of dry time, clean up right away to prevent losing parts.

Chose a color that is 2 values darker than your base color (add 2 drops of black) Using a straight black to line parts creates a very dead and unnatrual shading effect.

I hope this explains the topic of washes!

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