Painting, and Doing "The Dip"

More properly, this post involves more the "Magic Wash" than the dip, the Magic Wash basically being clear Future acrylic Floor polish (see the last post, "Prime Time", as well), diluted or not with anywhere from a little to a lot of water, tinted with ink and or acrylic paint, and possibly including a surfactant of one kind or another. There seem to be at least as many recipes for "The Dip" as there are painters, although the original dip was Minwax Tudor Polyurethane wood stain, a ? more sophisticated version of which is marketed as the Army painter line. I really didn't want to get into using any product involving volatile, flammable, malodorous and toxic solvents, so the Acrylic version is what I have decided to experiment with.

The Volunteers for this experiment are two regiments of 28mm Sash and Saber Russian Grenadiers... weren't you warned never to volunteer in the army, son? Anyway, I'm going to really belabor this thing by taking them through the process from start to finish, so bear with me. I have no delusions about being more than a fairly good hobby painter as best - I'd never even dream of  entering a painting competition, but I like my figures to look good, and to put lots of them on the table, so they can't take forever to finish! 

After being trimmed of flash etc, the figures were glued (using plain white "Elmer's" PVA glue)  in groups of three to tongue blades (aka tongue depressors - new ones, I'm a physician in private practice so I have plenty of these around - very cheap, and I have yet to finish the box of hundreds I ordered just for hobby use 10+ years ago). They are the spray primed white with Krylon spray primer (flammable noxious fumes warning!). Once that has dried thoroughly (in the garage!), I applied the first, very sloppy coat of dark green (I use mostly Delta Ceramcoat craft paints, this was a mixture of semi-opaque Pine green and opaque Christmas Green with a drop or two of Color Float (water with surfactant to slow drying and encourage settling of pigment into the lower spots of the castings) added.

Next, the pants are painted white, taking care at the join with the green coats but otherwise sloping it on with a big brush. 

Next the shakos and pack were painted Delta Charcoal, a very dark grey. I don't usually use that for these items, but rather pure black instead , but I figured it might give some play for the Magic Wash to bring out the details in these items later.

Next the overcoats, which the Russian Infantry characteristically wore slung across their chests when not otherwise needed, thus acting as some protection form sword cuts, etc, were painted a greyish brown color, Delta Toffee Brown, IIRC.

Then I used Delta Terra Cotta with a bit of Color float added to paint the hands and faces and orange-bron color, with some shading effects happening from the surfactant/drying delay action. I've seen many expert painters recommend painting the faces *first*; this doesn't work for me as they get too much paint slopped on them from the other items if I do it that way. Don't worry, I won't leave them with this unnatural color!

Next I have painted the black items - the tall Grenadier plumes (except the musician), shoes, sword scabbards, etc - with pure black this time. 

Yep, the cartridge boxes were painted black too; and here I've painted the metal canteens that were standard Russian issue with Valejo "Oily Steel"; I do love the Vallejo acrylic metallics, and especially this color, which is great for medieval armor, among other things. 

Bright red, Delta "Fire Red", I believe, for the collars, cuffs, turnbacks... and the tall plume of the Fifer!

Rear view of the officer, Standard Bearer, and drummer at this stage. Still look pretty crude, eh?

Now I've added the finer details in white - the cords on the shakos, straps on the coat, and the lace on the fifer's uniform... starting to look like they  just might come out OK after all!

Rear view after the white details are added... oops, missed the cords on the NCO on the left - we'll have to fix that later!

Muskets painted Burnt Umber with a bit of Color Float added - this paint is semi opaque, and with the thinner added it gives a bit of a wood grain look to the guns. I admit that I hate spending time painting muskets, so I don't paint the metal bands, etc on them - do the minimum I can there!

Rear view after painting the muskets brown... and now adding the brass metal elements to the cartridge boxes.

and (Vallejo acrylic) Brass to the shako ornaments, sword hilts, and buttons... I have also gone back and painted a dark green stripe over the cuff flaps just before painting the buttons there as well. 

Next the tall plumes were dry brushed with Delta Hippo grey, a medium grey shade.  This regiment has "straw colored flagpoles, drumsticks, NCO crops, etc, painted with Delta... "Straw", a somewhat muddied yellow. Noted also the (Vallego acrylic) gold trim to the collar and cuffs of the NCO on the left. The hands and faces were dry brushed with Delta Medium Flesh, and mustaches and hair painted with Delta Brown Iron Oxide.

Silver (again Vallejo acrylic) is painted onto the bayonets, as well as the officer's sashes, swords, etc. 

The musicians tall red plumes were dry brushed with some Delta "Pumpkin" a bright "Halloween" orange; this works well for highlighting bright red.  The same color is also used to paint the fine orange stripes of the Russian Officer's sash. This is the other regiment, which had black flagpoles, drumsticks, etc.

Delta Opaque Yellow for the shoulderstraps; although yellow didn't become universal for the Grenadier regiments until very late in then Napoleonic, I like restricting it to the Grenadier regts; they also had the initials of the regiment's title (in Cyrillic) embroidered on them in red - no way I'm attempting that in 28mm, LOL!

OK, the figures are done, so now it's time to mix up some Dip (or, once again, more properly, Magic Wash). Some recipes recommend the use of Jet Dry as a surfactant or "wetting agent", so I got some. Also India ink is recommended by many, so here's a bottle of black ink as well. The beaker above (as will become evident shortly, my undergrad major was in chemistry, so I have a graduated beaker lying around the house, LOL) is actually the final, most dilute version I made. It looks very dark in the beaker, but it appears almost colorless as a drop on the brush! 

Some painters write that spraying the figures with gloss varnish (or applying a coat of straight acrylic future) to the figures before using the Magic Wash is an essential step, others ignore it. It seemed suspect to me, but I decided to spray one regiment with the varnish and not the other one to see if I could detect any effect from that upon the eventual magic Wash. Thus, I had two regiments of 18 figures each, which in turn had six stands/tongue depressors of three figures each. My plan was to use a succession of different recipes to see which effects I liked best. I start with Mixture "A", based upon a recent post on TMP, although that dealt with  6-15mm figures; still, it seemed like a good starting point, although I suspected the amount of ink was on the high side for my tastes:

I just wanted to share the perfect recipe-after much trial and error- to make an easy to use, mistake free black wash to bring out detail superbly on 6-15mm figures (only tested on these)
No colour dulling,easy to use + a time saver was the sought formulae.

To make 8 oz wash:

scant 4oz Future acrylic finish
scant 4oz distilled or boiled water
1 teaspoon "jet dry" (or other liquid diswasher spot remover)
50 drops opaque black acrylic ink
shake!
pigment stays suspended really well and requires the mildest of agitation to be ready to use.

Prime and paint figures any method, oil or acrylics.
spray with Krylon acrylic coating #1305 (a gloss finish)and let dry to touch (in low humidity, only about 10 min. max!)
brush on miracle wash and let dry to touch (as above 20-30 min max)
Spray with Krylon matte acrylic finish #1311 if you want a matte finish, otherwise spray again with the 1305 and you are done.
Comes out excellent every time!
Indestructable to general handling!
Wont "grey out" white uniforms!

So, I approximated this with 20ml tap water (the heck with distilling it or boiling it!), 20ml of Future, 2 drops of Jet Dry, and six drops of black india ink (not acrylic, which certainly might make a difference). Wow, that was really, really, black!

So, I brushed it liberally onto a bridge that I had semi-finished; looked OK there., not as dark as I feared.

Then I tried it on two figures of Opolchenie I had left over, being reserved for a future Militia Command stand; actually looked pretty good on their drab uniforms, settling nicely into the folds and seams. 

So, I took a deep breath and applied mixture A to my first pair of Volunteers; regiment "1", which will be the Life Grenadier Regiment is in the front,. and was not pre-varnished, Regiment "2", which will be the Petersburg Grenadiers, and was pre-varnished, is in the rear. At least the Russian uniforms are pretty dark to begin with! Looked darker than I wanted on the pants, but I wanted to let it dry to be sure I gave this mix a fair shake, and here's the result - definitely brings out the details in the cords well, and the settling in around the collar and low parts of the chistraps, hands etc works well... but the pants - really a dirtier, darker look that I really like. How about you?

So, I created mixture "B" by adding 10ml each of water and Future to the prior batch, thus effectively reducing the concentration of ink by about 1/3, and applied it liberally to my next set of "volunteers". After drying, the result is above. I like this better, but still a bit dark on the white pants for my taste, and I really don't want to fuss with going back and dry brushing them after the Wash!

So, I created mixture "C" by adding another 10ml each of water and Future to "B", thus decreasing the pigment by roughly half from the original starting  mixture "A". There is still detail being brought out in the cords and flounders, and elsewhere, and he pants look much more acceptable. By the way, I can't detect any difference at all between 1C and 2C, or any of the other pairs, so the pre-varnish seems a waste of time and fumes to me so far! Also, the finish is only very slightly glossy; I like a semi gloss finish on my figures, and this is actually less than there generally is after varnishing them. 

My next trials switched to using undiluted future... Mixture "D" consisted of 40ml of Future and 3 drips of ink, so effectively the same concentration of ink as "C", but no water (or jet dry). Not surprisingly, the results are similar to that seem with C, except the finish is notably glossier than that seen with the first three trials. I think this still may be a bit heavy on the ink, having seen John Leahey, who paints for $ and has posted a number of times to TMP on the subject, recommend very small amounts of ink in pure Future.

This lead to mixture "E", diluting "D" 50% by adding another 40ml of Future. This gave the more subtle results above, which I was fairly happy with. Still no difference I can discern between 1E and 2E, (no varnish vs. pre-varnished). 

Finally, I was curious to see if there would be any effect on the coloration or gloss by adding Jet Dry to the pure future and ink mixture of "E", thus creating mixture "F", which was applied liberally (removing obvious, unwanted pooling, as in prior all cases) to the final volunteers, the command stand figures. Looks pretty good, although I'm not sure the Jet Dry changed anything. That's not too surprising as the water content of pure Future is supposedly fairly low. The gloss of the finish also seems about the same, although not displeasing to me. I like the fact that no final spray varnish is required; trying to find a day warm enough to do that in the garage in Winter in New England is a hit or miss proposition! Similarly, it seems that pre-varnishing is pointless, at least with the mixtures tried to date, again a plus in my book. Future also has a rather mild, fairly pleasant scent, especially compared with solvents, and requires no ventilation!

Here's a table with the compositions of the various washes standardized to a 4 ounce (120 ml) volume:

Mixture	Future	Water	India Ink	Jet Dry
A	60ml	60ml	18 drops	6 drops
B	60ml	60ml	12 drops	4 drops
C	60ml	60ml	9 drops	3 drops
D	120ml	none	9 drops	none
E	120ml	none	4.5 drops	none
F	120ml	none	4.5 drops	3 drops

Based upon the above, I'm inclined to try "G" next time - 60ml Future, 60ml water, 4 or 5 drops ink and 3-6 drops Jet Dry; that will give a satin type finish with similar results to "E" and "F" otherwise... or so it would seem!  Maybe compare without the Jet Dry as well. We'll see. The darker version may still be good for horses and drab uniforms/ancient/medieval types.

I'll present the finished units  (I didn't touch them up at all after the Magic Washes above) in the next post!

Thanks for bearing with my pseudo-scientific methods!

Peter