Easy to acquire replacement for Badab Black?

[George Labour]

Okay just to keep it short, I'm beginning to use an airbrush to apply a badab black wash to my seven valkyries, and other larger vehicles so as to avoid streaks. However It's going to be costly, especially as I just spilled three bottles worth of the stuff when I accidentally knocked the airbrush bottle onto the ground.

So my question is, is there an easy to acquire and less costly alternative to Badab black that's more or less ready to go from the bottle?

I know I could just thin black paint out, but I'd still need to buy quite a bit of it and then hope i get the water to pain ratio right each time. So something in a big bottle or can or at least cheaper than GW badab black is really what I want.

[fade_74]

It's easy to make your own washes. I was doing it for 20 years before GW made theirs. Get a big ol' bottle of cheap black acrylic paint at your local walmart target etc. Measure out about 10 to 1 water to paint into a container. If you are making a large batch i would use a teaspoon. then add about 6-10 drops of dish washing detergent ie. Dawn, Palmolive etc. stir it up. bam....you have a black wash. try it out on a spare old model. If it is to thick...add more water....to thin, yep you guessed it, add more paint.

Now if you wanna make a reallly good wash....

Get some brown and black oil paints....thin with odorless thinner, to a thin watery consistency.
ONLY APPLY THIS TO A MODEL THAT YOU HAVE PUT A GLOSS yes i said GLOSS topcoat on. The gloss will allow the wash to run freely into cracks. Once you have allowed the wash to dry, use a brush dampened with thinner to "streak" the wash downwards into rainmarks. You can also blend in the wash after its dry with a dampened brush again. This is an advanced technique that is well detailed in IA:masterclass.

see this thread for examples, as most of them were done this way
http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?t=4302

if you need any help feel free to ask.

[Lane]

The cheap acrylic paint will probably not work well in a airbrush due to the coarse pigments.

Try this http://awesomepaintjob.com/index.cfm/resources.recipes
for about $20 you can make about 15 oz. of wash, that's about 36 pots of GW washes.

And the Armor Wash is fairly close to Devlan Mud.

[TAVAAR]

The cheap acrylic paint will probably not work well in a airbrush due to the coarse pigments.

Try this http://awesomepaintjob.com/index.cfm/resources.recipes
for about $20 you can make about 15 oz. of wash, that's about 36 pots of GW washes.

And the Armor Wash is fairly close to Devlan Mud.

Have you used this personally? If you have does it turn out glossy or fairly matte. I'm also looking for a mass production of Badab alternative. More on the matte side is preferable so if it is more glossy how would I soften it up? Thanks

[StraightSilver]

You could try the Coat D'arms washes and shades.

I use Coat D'arms paints because they come in the better old style Citadel pots, which means they don't dry out as fast, and they are a little bit cheaper than Citadel paints. They also produce many of the colours GW have now discontinued and have a great military range for IG.

Coat D'arms paints are exactly the same as GW ones as I believe Coat D'arms originally made the paint for GW.

I have to admit though that I have yet to use their washes and shaders but they are quite new so I suspect are exactly the same as the GW ones.

They do large pots of shaders for £5 which is quite a lot cheaper:

http://www.terrainwarehouse.co.uk/category.aspx?CategoryID=172

And their washes are £2:

http://www.terrainwarehouse.co.uk/category.aspx?CategoryID=173

They might be worth a look. Hope that helps.

EDIT: Oops sorry, just realised that the Super Shader is actually their version of Dip, which may not be what you're after

[Lane]

Try this http://awesomepaintjob.com/index.cfm/resources.recipes


Seconded.

I made some of these washes and think they turned out quite well.
If you are concerned about glossiness then use the ultra-matte medium instead of the matte medium. I also reduced the amount of medium from 1/2 to 1/3 and even then it does not dissolve completely. Not liking the sales policy of the source for bottles (extra charge for small purchase volume) I use the dropper bottles from Reaper Minis http://www.reapermini.com/OnlineStore/Accessories/latest/08702

Warning do not store bottles upside down for long periods, the medium will collect in the tip and clog it.