Painting technique question.

[Primarch]

What is a good (ie quick and easy) way to get a washed out look? I'd like to do some figures in a less parade ground style, but most of my efforts seem to come out as either strong vivid colours or just dirty and brown. Historically speaking, most uniforms were not colour-fast and exposure to sunlight and rain would quickly cause them to fade.
Any suggestions?

[ashdevon]

I've gone back to the simple shading with brown and blue ink. The kind GW stocked years back. Like the washes but a stronger pigment. I find a bit of that and then some simple highlights with lines and drybrush still does the job.
Lots of good products out there for weathering however a simple Reikland flesh ink over clothes still comes up wonders for the worn look.

[ashdevon]

Army painter dip works well but is a bit extreme. Your minis could end up looking like undead.

[The Other Dave]

What I do is start with a black undercoat, then give a series of drybrushes in successively lighter colors (either grey all the way up to off-white or brown to off-white depending on how cool or warm an effect I'm looking for) as a base coat. Then I paint over that with my actual base color paint well-thinned - at least 3:1 or so, but it'll vary with the paint and the effect you're going for - with acrylic medium. You could use GW's Lahmian Medium, but Vallejo matte medium is much cheaper for a big old squeeze bottle. The effect is to make the base coat a bit translucent and let the browns and greys underneath show through the color on top, which desaturates it nicely (and also provides a nice first highlighting / shading step).

You can get the same effect with a zenithal highlight, but I'm too cheap / pressed for space to get an airbrush. Some folks also focus on glazes rather than just medium-thinned-paint but that can also be more fiddly.

[Primarch]

@Ashdevon - Thanks, but I think I wasn't clear enough in my first post. I'm good with washes, it's a more faded look I'm after.

which desaturates it

Yes, that's the term I'm looking for. Desaturated!
I'll give that a shot then.
Any other techniques for desaturating your colours since we are on the topic?

[me_in_japan]

Without wishing to be an ass, but can you not just use a more desaturated paint? I mean, instead of forest green, use goblin green? Instead of white, use grey? Etc?

If you want to get technical, you can desaturate any colour by adding a bit of its opposite. Ie to desaturate red, add green. To desaturate blue, add brown, etc. Then you can dick about and add dark grey/black and light grey/white for brightness/darkness.

And a final thing: the whole issue of saturation disappears if you stop painting straight out of a pot and just use a wet palette for mixing your own colours. Everything I do is desaturated, because every colour I use on minis is mixed. In fact I’m having the opposite problem as I’m currently trying to do neon pink hair and it’s too dull

[Primarch]

#edit - Deleted snarky response. I was having a bad day and probably read too much into M_i_J's comments.
My apologies.

If you want to get technical, you can desaturate any colour by adding a bit of its opposite. Ie to desaturate red, add green. To desaturate blue, add brown, etc. Then you can dick about and add dark grey/black and light grey/white for brightness/darkness.

Thank you, that is helpful. I shall give that a try this week along with ToD's suggestion and see which is better for me.

[The Other Dave]

The thing to be careful with in mixing opposite paints is you want to use the tint (cyan-magenta-yellow) color wheel rather than the light (red-yellow-blue) one. Mixing red paint with a touch of green paint gives you a muddy brownish-red (which can actually be a good way to fake crimson, but that's another kettle of), mixing red with a touch of azure / cyan gives you a "grayer" desaturated red.

[Primarch]

The thing to be careful with in mixing opposite paints is you want to use the tint (cyan-magenta-yellow) color wheel rather than the light (red-yellow-blue) one. Mixing red paint with a touch of green paint gives you a muddy brownish-red (which can actually be a good way to fake crimson, but that's another kettle of), mixing red with a touch of azure / cyan gives you a "grayer" desaturated red.

Thanks! That helps a lot, and also explains why I usually seem to end up with brown colours.

[Primarch]

Well, I had a crack at blending some tints with some hues to highlight this fellow.

I may have overdone the red a bit and not done enough with the blue, but as a first attempt I'm pretty happy. Under the softer lights of my gaming table, it's good enough for gaming.