Carcharodons: Need painting help!

[Alrik_40000]

Hey internet painting gurus, let me pick your brains for a second. I'm trying to help my brother get his Carcharodons (counting as Space Wolves) painted up for a tourney.

I know you all probably know what they look like, but generally speaking, they've got light gray armor, darker gray shoulder pads, and brass detailing in some places (such as the studded shoulder pads.) We've tried a few test marines with a light gray primer, and washes for shading, but the washes always seem to make the models look too dirty. Am I doing something wrong here? Should I maybe go back over the armor with grey to cover up the splotchy effect of the wash?

If you were gonna paint up a unit of those guys, how would you do it?

Thanks for any help you can provide,

Alrik

[SotonShades]

rather than washing the whole area, just added neatly into the recesses and anywhere a natural shadow would form. if you do want to wash the whole area i would almost always advise going back over with the mid-tone colour, especially if you were to plan on highlighting.

to give the grey (especially the lighter grey) depth without making it dirty looking, have you tried an blue wash?

also, dont forget two light coats are almost all ways better than a single heavy coat. this applies to washes as much as any other type of painting, so try a thin black wash that you can barely see over the original paint colour and then when it has completely dried, wash it with the same thin wash, rather than drowning the area in paint and leaving it to dry. This should help get rid of the splotchyness of a heavy wash without losing the intensity of the colour.

[fade_74]

Soton has the right idea. Think "ink" not "wash". When you say wash, it makes people want to spread it all over their models. Get a nice fine brush with really long bristles (so it holds the wash well) and paint it into the recessed areas.