"What tone of dip should I use?" Topic

I have some Rebel Mini Kurgans and Planetary Marines to paint up. I plan to paint the Kurgans to look like the Mangalores from the movie 5th Element, which is a kind of gray/brown green color. The marines will be Medium dark green.

Should I go with a dark tone dip or buy the minwax Tudor black for the best result, or should I go with medium tone? I guess I am asking what colors look better with the dark, medium and light shades?

I tested the dark tone dip on 2 figures but I am not sure if I can get a better result from the Tudor black for the color scheme. Any suggestion regarding the proper dip is appreciated. Here are some pics:

link

Well, I normally use Army Painter Quick Strong and Dark Shades for the stuff I painted for Rebel, but for the colors you mention, the Tudor Black should be fine. My strong suggestion is on how you apply the dip. I ALWAYS use a brush and never actually dip miniatures. I add a heavy coat of the stain and give it a minute or so to soak in while I add stain to a few other miniatures, making sure I get the minis completely covered. After the minis have had a little time to rest, a minute or two while doing the others, I take my brush and wipe the stain off of it on a paper towel. I then wipe the minis with the brush to remove extra stain, wiping the brush on the paper towel to keep removing the excess stain from it so it is even without too many puddles except in the crevices. It take a little longer and you need an eye for how much to remove, but I have done a LOT of minis this way and it works pretty well to get an even coat without a lot of discoloration. You may even want to consider a gloss coat over the base colors before dipping if you want to better protect the colors from staining from the dip, but I normally don't bother.

Lots of stuff painted like this on my Skydrive: link

Jeff

Dark Tone which has black pigments in it is roughly the same thing as Tudor. I can't tell from the small pics, but I think that's what you are using.

The aproximate AP to Minwax Polyshades equivalents are
Dark Tone – Tudor
Strong Tone – Antique Walnut
Soft Tone – Peacan

That said,
I would recommend the Dark/Tudor dip for the Marines. I find that it shows up better on greys and greens without adding the dirty look that the brown pigments in other shades can give. Of course some folks want more dirtyness…

For the Mangalores, since they are already a bit brownish you could go either way though when dealing with greys, I usually prefer to go with tudor.

I second JRacel's comment to brush it on. I use brushes for the application and removal of excess. Here's my tutorial for brush dipping.

link
Along with a bunch of other exmaples, the tutorial shows Green Elves and grey void junkers with Strong/Walnut.

Here's a batch of Junkers I did later with Tudor as well as some dark green neo soviets also done with Tudor.
link

Thanks, your info is extremely helpful!

Jeff, what colors did you use for the Titan Marines? I always fancied them.

Late to the game, but I use both Tudor (black) and Royal Walnut (dark, dirty brown appearance) in the Polyshades. The Tudor is the typical Black wash. The Royal Walnut give a dirty, been crawling in the mud, brown look to figures. I used the Royal Walnut for everything, for a number of years, with satisfying results. I only recently began using the Tudor. Cheers!