⚠️How to Make a *BETTER* Black Wash for Terrain - RECIPE 

Les' recipe actually called for *distilled* water, not *deionized* water like I mispoke in the video.....either way, distilled water is an option, but for terrain I really don't think you *need* it, tap water should do fine....unless you have terrible tap water. *MY RECIPE* Ingredients *Water* (Use distilled if you wish) *Flow Aid* (Liquitex or Jet Dry) Liquitex (USA) amzn.to/2ofiLC0 (Canada) amzn.to/2LqHCw1 Jet Dry (USA) amzn.to/2PHzP04 (Canada) amzn.to/2BSRXkS *Matte Medium* (USA) amzn.to/2N0aVtY (Canada) amzn.to/2N0aVtY *Acrylic Ink* Carbon Black (USA) amzn.to/2LvfiZs (Canada) amzn.to/2wlFmkV Burnt Umber (USA) amzn.to/2LviQLj (Canada) amzn.to/2wj9Sfj ^(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases) Mix flow aid into water at approximately 10 (water) to 1 (flow aid). Then mix water and matte medium at apox. 60/40 water to medium. Add ink until you achieve the desired results.

Please tell me you're making your kitchen out of XPS foam and Modpodge 😆

For those curious/interested, here's an explanation/look at the mechanics of these washes: - The reason why distilled water is recommended is because it won't stagnate on you. This is important if you plan on either mixing up a big batch of wash or you plan on storing it for long periods of time; eventually tap water will go stagnant on you, though how long that takes depends on the quality of your tap water and the environment its being stored in. That being said, if you know you're going to be using the wash immediately and you know it won't last long then distilled water isn't necessary. - The flow aid is used to break surface tension, i.e. its a surfactant; this is so you don't get tide marks (a.k.a coffee rings). If you only use water, it will tend to pool a lot more and, as a result, you'll find rings of color around the recesses but little to none in the recesses themselves. The surface tension of water prevents the pigment from settling in the recesses, and as the water evaporates the surface area shrinks, pulling the pigment out to the sides and forming those rings. - If you just mix water, flow aid and matte medium and leave it this way, you know have the equivalent of Games Workshops Lahmian Medium, i.e. acrylic medium with no pigment (if you look closely, you can see that Lahmian Medium isn't actually clear, but is slightly milky), which is great for thinning paints without diluting them, meaning you can turn pretty much any color into a wash/glaze whenever you want, or just thin your paints for more translucent layers. - I would actually recommend putting glass beads in the bottles (I also recommend this for paint bottles) as agitators. In this case, if you used the Jet Dry, it will allow you to mix up the wash without getting as much foam/soap bubbles, but even if you use flow aid instead putting agitators in is never a bad idea. When it comes to paints, this will make mixing them a good deal easier and less stressful on your hands and wrists when it comes to shaking your paints.

The black wash should really make the details pop in your kitchen.

I just made a trio set of washes using your method-black, brown, and green. All inks are Liquitex Professional Acrylic Inks. Here are my recipes: Wash Base • 1 oz distilled water • 10 drops rinse aid • 3/4 oz matte medium Black Wash • 40 drops Carbon Black ink • 10 drops Transparent Burnt Umber ink Brown Wash • 40 drops Transparent Burnt Umber ink • 10 drops Carbon Black ink Green Wash • 30 drops Vivid Lime Green ink • 15 drops Transparent Burnt Umber ink • 5 drops Carbon Black ink I do measure so I can reproduce the washes accurately each time I make them.

Folkart Makes a medium called floating medium and it does the same thing as Liquitex flow aid but cheaper. 8 oz is around $5 usd.

With a dropper bottle, you don’t really have to worry much about bubbles. Just give the wash a good shake and turn it upside down. Wait a few seconds and the bubbles will rise to the bottom of the bottle. What comes out of the dropper should be bubble free. Also, if you use Liquitex flow improver you will indeed get less bubbles.

A quick tip: put a glass marble in the bottom of the squeeze bottle. It will help you "swirl" the wash to mix it evenly without shaking and making foam.

I picked up the ingredients I needed at Hobby Lobby yesterday, 10-5-22. FYI, here's what I spent: Liquitex Matte Medium - 16 Ounce $18.99, Master's Touch flow medium (don't recall the price but they didn't have Liquitex brand), Acrylic Inks - 2 @ $6.99 each and plastic bottles 3-pack - $3.50. Total: approximately $47.

I've walked past all these ingredients in Michaels many times. I thought "meh" Nuln Oil works fine. Then I started painting the Ruins of Osgilliath and went through almost an entire bottle on just 3 of the bits of terrain. Time to make my own black wash! Great vid :)

Hey Black Magic. I just wanted you too know that I was watching this video late at night before i fell asleep. I dozed off for a moment. My iPad slipped my grip just for a moment...it cracked my nose. Your video is so good I took my nosebleed and finished it...Congratulations, you are worth powering through.

I've been uses Les' recipe for years. It's so good for terrain. I like the idea of mixing in a bit of brown too

This is going to save me so much money on washes for terrain....thanks for this handy recipe!

I dig it! Looks better than what I have been mixing for myself for sure. Thanks!

This is perfectly timed. I'm about to go to the store to refresh my crafting supplies. And I haven't made a black wash yet

Love videos like this - very useful. Keep us updated on the kitchen remodel too - would enjoy seeing the progress.

This is a really nice wash! Used it on the repaint of my tiles and stuff.

Yaaaas liquitex is wonderful! 😍 I actually have all of these!

Thank you. I've been looking for a good and not to hard to make wash and this looks really good.

Here's a tip: If you use dropper bottles for washes, or do what I did and transfer all your paints to dropper bottles, add a stainless steel BB to each bottle to act as an agitator when you shake it. It cuts down on the shaking you have to do to re-mix paints that have separated.

I finally got round to watching this video. I've been thinking of making washes. Got a pretty good idea on the how to now, only need to get my hands on some inks.

i know you posted this four years ago, but I really appreciate you taking the time to make it! It was super helpful for me as i'm just getting into figure painting and miniatures! I hope you're having a great day wherever you are now!

Lester is a Legend. I learned a lot from him when i started mini painting and airbrushing. And he is the reason i got better in commission painting.

just getting started in making terrain and i am loving your videos. thanking my fellow gamers are enjoying the new additions to the table

I tried a bunch of recipes and best results were with this one. I tried with acrylic paints and inks also.

Finally got round to making my own washes. Thanks for the tips. 👍

Perfect video. I made today my first black, brown and green washes.

Awesome vid. Just used your method to make my own black wash and it turned out great. Thank you!

This stuff worked great. I was having problems with my water and ink combo... but by adding the rinse aid (I was using plain dish soap) AND the matt medium got rid of my "rings" that were drying around the low spots on my models and miniatures. I was able to order the liquitex directly thru Amazon without any problems. Thanks Black Magic Craft. I have been painting minis for years but have recently ventured into the foam type terrain. I spent years of my youth working in plaster while building model railroads...... and yes.... I am an old school D&D geek too. This site has allowed me to pick up some of my old crafting arts again.

Thank you soooo much !!! Found everything I needed with no issues. Can’t wait to try this technique

Fabulous tutorial and the two washes are incredible

Brilliant Videos and really really Helpful I’m coming back from a 40 year break. You Explain things really well thank you 👍

Thank you for this outstanding tutorial! I was able to adopt this for the available ingredients in my area. I have to get different color inks now because I think I have only gotten started. Cheers

Great recipe! Your videos are awesome! I’m learning so much!

Thanks for the tip. I made a black wash and it turned out great.

I use your old wash on my mini's and they turned out just fine. I am not the best painter, in fact I am just starting out in this, but they still look just fine to my players.

Very useful! Thanks for posting!

A fantastic recipe, I have searched for years for a perfect recipe this is it! And a little tip try glazes they are simply colour tinted varnishes, honestly they're really useful!

Thanks for the update on the wash. I will try it soon as I'm way behind on painting my minis and my wild western town. Wash me luck!

I have been making my own wash for the past few years using a 50/50 mix of matte medium in Windex and then add your ink to flavor. And ive had a lot of good results with it on terrain and miniatures

Great vid ..in the process of a build so feel your kitchen update 👍

Looks great & needing something like this for a ton of GW terrain for kill team. Thanks!

Super cool man!!! A very amazing int. Many thanks!

Very helpful and easily understood 👍

Good video. Ink is definitely the way to go. Just getting back into painting. This reminded me of the first time I learned about black-washing, back in 1993. Back then we used diluted India Ink. Stuff was expensive (it's not anymore) but so strong you could get a lot of mix for your money. Dried almost instantly so you could get to painting right away. Bubbles were common so we would lightly blast with compressed air, which removed bubbles, spread the ink deeper and more randomly, and helped dry all at once. Glad to see some old school techniques still around. Thanks.

This worked great!

Great idea! I plan to use this on mixed media art!

This is the first video I watched from you, subscribed because of this video.

Thank you for this video, but more so thank you for explaining what Acrylic medium is in layman's terms! It really helped!

I swear to god I watch this like every build hahaha

Nice one my man!

Hell yeah, Les' wash has been my standard for years.

Love the idea of using JD for terrain wash. I'm going to have to mix some up. I've been using Les' recipe for my minis for awhile and loved it, but didn't want to make a batch big enough for terrain.

Thank you for sharing this!

Thanks man i been looking for this!!

Love this wash recipe! TY

Hope the kitchen is coming along nicely, roll for mates aggro level. When you got finished with that Brown wash and hadn't put the cap on I was waiting for you to knock it over made it intense great vid.

Lovely. I really like the look of the brown one. I think I would get a bit more use out of that than my usual black with a bit of coffee.

Huzzah! I like his mix too, this is a much better update to your recipe good sir. Stay safe

Excellent video and thanks for sharing, just bought some amazon tools over your link as well. Keep up the great work, greetings from Alberta 🇨🇦

Great video 👍 Thanks for the recipe 😊

Ooooo I only just found your old wash video... thankfully found this one... time to get making...

Les is the legend! It's so heartbreaking he doesn't make vids hardly at all anymore.

I am really glad the acrylic ink has been working out for you! I think I commented about using them for something else on one of your videos before? Ive been using the inks not only on washes but to darken up the modpodge base coat as well. Been thinking about expanding on making more washes in other colors to add some pops of color for terrain and minis

Awesome! I had most of this stuff lying around except for the inks, but I just subbed in some testor's gloss paint. I'm 3d printing an OpenForge dungeon and didn't want to use all my nuln oil. Thanks for the vid!

Finally got around to making a batch of the new and improved wash, turned out great! Thanks for recipe, cheers! On another note, I used regular tap water for my first batch of wash, and after a few months it went stagnant and started stinking pretty bad.

I use the same base, without the ink, for my paint thinner. And for washing I use a black and very dark gray ink which looks very nice on minis.

Thank you so much.

If you want to make this mix more touch resilliant, you can add "clear wax floor polish" what used to be Johnson's Clear

exactley what i needed.

For my black washes i like to use red in it since it pops more and in areas with fire a strait red wash is great.

You know i didn't have any ink on me but I used apple barrel black paint and roughly followed your instructions for everything. With everything eyeballed it turned out great.

thanks a lot!

Thanks for this... recipe works great. Made some "Non-ln Oil" and "Anthrax Dirtshade"

Jeremy, no need to apologize for life. A vid on kitchen Reno would be neat

Thank you so much

Bro..this recipe is wicked. No more nuln oil and agrax earth shade prices. Thx!

Great video. May I suggest when making up a batch like this that you add all of the ingredients, get the mix to where you want and THEN add in the flow-aid. Means you get a lot less in the bubbling/foaming dept.

thank you! Honestly, I replaced some ingridients, but it still work!

I actually use this mix to thin my craft paints as well (minus the ink, of course), along with a 1:1 ratio of distilled water : paint, and oh my freaking word does it ever make it awesome. I use Flow-Aid, like Les does, though. I now also tend to use a drop of Liquitex's Slow-Dri medium as well, but only because the parchment paper I'm using tends to not wick water as well as it ought to, so the Slow-Dri helps keep it moist for longer and makes up for the issue. Only a single drop is needed of each: paint, this mix, water (and optional slow-dri if you wish/need it). It's ridonculous how far your paint will stretch with this stuff, and it doesn't even impact metallics negatively either.

You were building kitchen terrain!

I was really into BattleTech many years ago and, on the BattleTech miniature painting forums, I learned to add Future Floor Finish to the water and paint (ink) as a flow aid.

I've been using Les' washes ever since he posted the recipes on Daka Daka years ago. I make them just as he instructs and I get great results from them. (So sad he ran into all those problems, getting banned because *that other company* didn't like competition. At least all that got sorted out.)

And here I was, just running out of that expensive Games Workshop wash as I happened to stumble on to this vid. Thanks for the info!

I tried this recipe earlier this week. The Jet Dry Finish did not mix well with the Liquatex Matte Medium, and produced ugly clumps of acrylic in the mix! I'm going to try substituting Vallejo Airbrush Flow Improver to see if I get a better result.

I didn't have Liquitex Matte Medium so I used Vallejo Mecha Matt Varnish instead. The experiment looks good!

Thank for your Video. Again I am happy for these helpful tips. One question... would you mind making a showcase video of your another building e.g. the townhouses? In ep. 48 you can see these beautiful building in the background and I would really like to get some tips as I never constructed any medieval houses. Greeting from Germany. ;-)

I'm kind of sad that I cannot like a video more than once ! Thank you for the recipe !!

Oh hey! Fun fact for the diy wash crowd. Liquitex uses the same pigment density to volume for their paints across the line. So the ink will be as pigment dense as their full body paints and their flo paint line. I use liquitex a lot. I buy their Basics paint usually. I know it is slightly less dense then their other lines but I have yet to notice a major enough difference in the work I do to invest in the higher density paints. I've been making washes with the water/flo aid combo with the straight up basics paint instead of the medium+ink combo. Not really noticed any major differences.

thanks

സൂപ്പർ ബ്രോ.. പൊളിച്ചു....

Oxgall is a flow aid for watercolor, I think it should work as well.

I'd agree that for terrain washes Jet Dry is fine - a note though; the Liquitex flow aid will bubble when shaken too. - love it for minis, but I don't think it has any advantages over JD for terrain. I might suggest checking out flow medium rather than matte medium, or in combination. Gives some extra runniness. Lastly I've taken to adding a small amount of alcohol to my terrain washes. Extra flow, plus it helps sterilize the mix so that if I don't use it all quickly it doesn't go bad.

I started using Windex couple years ago. For terrain I use one part black paint two or even three parts Windex. Minis I use two part army painter dark wash, one part army painter light wash, three part Windex. Windex doesn't stagnate, it evaporates fast

Matte medium works great for water effects. I mix it with a little bit of ink or paint to make puddles/swamps etc.

you have a much better dollar store than I do...

Recently I had to wash and bind some rubble. I did a 30/30/30 paint to alchohol to pva. I was worried it would be glossy it wasn't maybe because I used alcohol. Oh you can use glycerin instead of soap. It does the same but doesn't foam. It's next to the constipation meds at the pharmacy it's about 5 bucks for enough to last a lifetime. The alcohol does the same; as alcohol has less surface tension, plus it dries faster. Still your wash is great I've used that recipe to make many contrast paints.

For anyone who finds this video, pure glycerin isn’t that expensive and won’t bubble. Great video and happy crafting.

Of all the bits the bottles were the hardest to find for me I had to get them online! 😂

Just add matte medium to Flint Michigan water and you should be good to go.