A Godevlan’d Mud Emergency… Or Washes Then and Now

17/10/2012 4 Comments


I reached for some Devlan Mud wash when painting some barricades today, and found there was none left in the paint racks. Ok, time to break out another from the stasth. Shock ! Horror ! There was none. Now I’d done a stock take earlier this year and back in March I had about 6 bottles of the stuff plus the one on the go…it seems I have gone through all 6+ of them.

Ok, what’s this I mused ? A bottle of Citadel Brown Ink back from the dim and distant past, let’s use that. Hmm, within seconds of applying it to the boxes in the barricade section I was painting I realsied the difference between the washes back then, and now.

Realising that virtually every figure I have on the table requires a brown wash at some point between now and Sunday (when I normally go shopping and can get to GW), I realised I had to do an EMERGENCY paint run as I can’t waste 4 days not painting anything to completion. A startled GW Manager had to do a double check and exclaimed:

It’s Wednesday not Sunday !

Three bottles of Agrax Earthshade (the replacement for Devlan Mud wash) later he had recovered his poise…
On returning home I broke open the first of the new Agrax wash and applied it.

The box on the right was done with the old Brown Ink. Despite a vigorous shake, the ink was much more dense and cloudy than the Agrax wash which I used on the left hand boxes. I even had to remove some with a tissue the old Brown Ink was so thick.
(The barricade is a resin piece by Hovels, ideal for BoB and AVBCW)

I dug out some of my other old brown washes (the original brown wash, and then Chestnut Ink) and the coverage was similarly not as good as the current washes (either devlan Mud, or now Agrax Earthshade).

Now I haven’t had the chance to use much of the latest Citadel range, but I have a feeling that this experience will be replicated. So it seems that the last 15-20 years has seen a great improvemnt in the technology and ofrmulation of paints and paint techniques.

Shame its going to take a long time to confirm this as I have rather a lot of paint to get through.

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4 Responses to A Godevlan’d Mud Emergency… Or Washes Then and Now

  1. jp1885 says:
    17/10/2012 at 7:38 pm

    Try Vallejo Wash Umber Shade – in my limited experience it’s pretty much the same as Devlan mud.

  2. hasturhasturhastur says:
    17/10/2012 at 10:36 pm

    Hmm next time yes, I must put in a postal order…sadly this was a case of “I can’t do nowt” without a brown wash, and the old washes simply don’t cut it these days. šŸ™‚

  3. Stuart Priest says:
    20/10/2012 at 6:11 pm

    I swear by the GW washes, can’t do much without them. I use the purple a lot as a shade for my gold metallics and the black and brown are an absolute must.

  4. Pingback: A Cunning Plan…. « The Lost City of Carcosa

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