Oil Wash Disaster

It was going so well...

Having applied a couple of coasts of Vallejo gloss varnish to the Imperial Fist Intercessor, I decided to give oil washing another go. It had worked so well on Shazam and I was so confident I'd get the same result here. How wrong I was.

I initially just tried pin washing the recesses but the wash just wasn't flowing correctly. I don't know if I'd thinned it down incorrectly or hadn't applied enough varnish or done something else wrong. As this didn't work I decided to completely wash the whole thing, let it dry slightly and then go back in with cotton buds and white spirit and clean up the flat surfaces.

Unfortunately I think I let it dry for too long. The wash just wouldn't budge. I went in with more white spirit and scrubbed it as hard as I could but it was no good. Eventually layers of base coat started peeling off and the blue plastic underneath began to reveal itself.

It's a shame because I was really starting to like how this model was looking. I could probably spend a bit of time fixing it but these Primaris models are supposed to be test models anyway and I'm chalking this one down to a failed oil wash test.

I think oil washing might a bit too advanced a technique for me at this stage and I'm trying to run before I've learned how to walk. That being said, I definitely see the advantage of using gloss varnish to make washes run into recesses more smoothly so I think I'm going to stick with that. For my next model my process is going to be:

• Prime and apply main basecoat colour using an airbrush
• Apply other basecoats using a paint brush
• Gloss varnish with the airbrush
• Wash
• Clean up basecosts
• Edge highlight

I'm still refining my technique and and trying to land on a process that fits for me. Hopefully this will work a bit better.