Lester Bursley’s Wash Recipe and Tutorial (repost).

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EVERYTHING BELOW THE LINE IS LESTER BURSLEY’S ORIGINAL CONTENT. NONE OF IT WAS WRITTEN BY MYSELF. FULL CREDIT TO LES FOR HIS WORK AND BEING WILLING TO SHARE HIS KNOWLEDGE WITH THE COMMUNITY.

This is a cut-and-paste repost of a post made by Lester Bursley on Dakka, back in 2009. Some of the links may no longer work, but all of the information therin is still relevant, and incredibly useful. While I do buy  range of commercial washes from Games Workshop, P3, vallejo and others, I also make my own using Les’ recipies and based off of Les’ recipies. I also keep a bunch of dropper bottles of ready made medium – just waiting on the ink for when I need to replace or make something new.

This is why I’ve reposted this today. I actually thought I had all of Les’ notes saved, and then could not find them. So I thought I’d post it here – not for clicks (my blog is tiny anyway) but for myself, for you guys who haven’t seen this and might find it useful, and for archive purposes – because as Photobucket happily showed us, the internet isn’t exactly permanent. As you’ll see below, some of the image links have started to die already…

The original post can be found here:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/261541.page

 

There’s also a copy posted on Awesomepaintjob here:

http://awesomepaintjob.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

 

I hope my efforts in testing inspire others to find cheaper alternatives to save our community

money. With the prices of models and other things not easily replaced, the hobby is expensive

and we should share what we can. -Les

WASH RECIPE:

You will need:

* Distilled Water (grocery store)
* Liquitex Matte Medium http://amzn.to/13u2XJZ
* Liquitex Flow Aid http://amzn.to/WEWiqx
* 30ml bottle http://amzn.to/Sws7qd
* Daler Rowney Acrylic Artist inks (Water Proof) http://amzn.to/VVvQwq
*2 filler bottles http://amzn.to/13u8QHS
* Recipe notebook so you can write down custom mixes

UK list by Tek:

Ingredients for UK LBursley washes:

* Distilled Water (You can but this at petrol stations / tool shops easily. Halfords defo stock it,

I got mine from Esso though. Allegedly places like Boots or Superdrug also stock it)
* Liquitex Matte Medium http://www.fredaldous.co.uk/shop-online/liquitex-mediums.htm /

http://www.artsupplies.co.uk/cat-liquitex-mediums.htm
* Liquitex Flow Aid (How about W&N Flow Improver? http://www.artifolk.co.uk/catalog/products/acrylic_mediums_and_primers/winsor_and_newton_acrylic_flow_improver_75ml_bottle.htm
* 1oz bottle http://snmstuff.co.uk/VallejoSets.aspx / check eBid and eBuyer for empty Vallejo

bottles; anywhere that sells Vallejo / P3 paints will sell empties.
* Daler Rowney Acrylic Artist inks (Water Proof) http://www.artdiscount.co.uk/department/inks/ / http://www.artsupplies.co.uk/cat-inks.htm
*2 filler bottles – Finding it bizarrely hard to find these online; anyone want to help?
* Recipe notebook so you can write down custom mixes

Really your best bet in the UK for finding any art materials are;

http://www.artsupplies.co.uk/
http://www.artdiscount.co.uk/
http://www.artifolk.co.uk/

All recipes use 1 oz bottles. Adjust to whatever size you decide to go with.

Preparation:

*Fill 1 filler bottle with Matte Medium, the other with a 10:1 Distilled Water and Flow Aid.
*Fill the 30ml Dropper Bottle half way with Matte Medium then fill the rest of the way

with the Water/Flow Aid mix leaving a little room for the ink drops so you dont over flow.
Every bottle uses this combination to start with.
*Shake inks well before adding them to the mix.

Tailoring Washes to your liking:

-DARKEN-LIGHTEN: add or subtract drops from the recipe (duh lol)
-THICKEN WASH: Change the 1:1 medium and water mix to have more matte medium

than water i.e. 60% medium 40% water
-THIN WASH: Opposite of above, more water than medium in mix.

Experimenting with MIXES and Custom Colors:
This took time and money to get things right in the recipe. The best advice I can give you

is “write it down”. Have a little notebook just for mixes. Write the medium/water ratios

and drops of ink (each color if it’s a combo). The number of colors you can come up with

are limitless.

Colors:

My mixes will give you a starting point and you can customize to your liking from there.

Soft Body Black: 20 drops Black

Heavy Body Black: 60 drops Black

Parchment: 40 Drops Flesh Tint

Flesh Wash: 40 Drops Burnt Umber

Dark Sepia: 40 Drops Sepia

Blue: 40 Drops Rowney Blue

Green: 40 Drops Dark Green

Purple: 40 Drops Purple Lake

You can mix the ink colors to make infinate amounts of custom colors for your own

purpose. Never buy washes with limited color choices. You now have the recipe to

the most flexible wash production that you can do at home.

Enjoy! -Les

ADDED—————Jan 5 2011——————————-

.5oz Bottle measurements for Les’ DIRTY WASHES (1:1 premixed matte medium and

h2o-flow aid mix is added after the ink is counted out)

STONE – 60 Raw Sienna : 20 Black

RUBY – 60 Flame Red : 20 Black

ARMOR WASH – 60 Sepia : 20 Black

SAPPHIRE – 60 Rowney Blue : 20 Black

BABY POOP – 60 Flame Orange : 20 Black

ALGAE – 60 Dark Green : 20 Black

SEWER WATER – 60 Burnt Umber : 20 Black

AMETHYST – 60 Purple Lake : 20 Black

CONCRETE – 60 Flesh Tint : 20 Black

STORM CLOUD – 60 Turquoise : 20 Black

A little shopping trip…

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So with a public holiday yesterday, Marouda and I went out and saw Deadpool 2, which was fun. (Probably the funniest online review can be found here. 6min video. Beware, spoilers.)

Anyway, after that, we stopped in BigW, which is one of those discount department stores like Kmart or Target. While we were in there, we checked out the toy section. The $10 Star Wars Hot Wheels ship above is probably a tiny bit small for the actual Resistance Bomber in X-Wing, but Im sure we can use it as a proxy, or as a shuttle instead of the little card token, or even as a damaged ship “terrain” to replace an asteroid.

I also recently ordered Gaslands (should be here …soon!) and I wanted to look at the toy cars.

So we got these:

The above were all $2 each. (Yeah, we got 2 of the armoured cars.)

This triple pack was $6.50.

These Jurassic Park Armoured Cars were $4.00 each. $2.00 for the cars, and $2.00 for the licenced IP, I guess.

I also saw these Hot Wheels tracks there.

Which reminded me that I recently saw (what I think are) these very products in use as walkways on someone’s Necromunda table. I believe it was on someone’s blog, actually. As you can see, the size works for both 32mm and 25mm bases. They’re made from pretty soft/bendy PVC, though, so I’ll need to be careful with them.

So at $4 each… I picked up 5 sets. $20 for all the extra walkways I should ever need. With this many I can easily chop and shorten as many as I want to. Perhaps I can even glue a little circular bit onto some of my terrain to notch the walkways onto. Now I just need to find which locally-available (spray) paints will properly adhere to this soft and bendy PVC…

All in all, more of a preview post than anything else, but what (should be?) a Gaslands force each for Marouda and myself for $20.50, plus something for X-Wing and some Necro-scenery. Not too shabby.