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So I have a nice stock of Reaper inks, which is cool. And I've used them before to brilliant effect. Love 'em. With that said, I'm painting a Behir for my ongoing S4 AD&D game. On the cover, the beastie has a decidedly teal/blue-green belly. For reference here's a similar critter in Reaper's catalog, the Cavern Crawler: (WAY better looking than all the "official" offerings from D&D Minis or GF9 - they're both too fat!) Anyway... I'm using the Ocean triad to get the shade of blue I want (Deep Ocean, Marine Teal, Surf Aqua, 9076, -77 and -78, respectively) and I'm wondering about shading with an ink. I've got both Blue Ink and Green Ink...which do you guys think will work better for the traditional S4/Monster Manual II Behir, blue or green? Or should I do a wash of Deep Ocean instead, and base with Marine Teal and highlight with Surf Aqua and a final highlight of 50/50 Surf Aqua + Pure White? I just don't wanna get in there and start putting blue ink on and everything get stained navy blue, or green and everything go all grass colored on me.

Yo, folks. Questions: 1. When using a wash, how does one decide what color to use? I'm working with the Reaper triad, and I also picked up three Citadel shades the other day. Reaper's black I think I get. It gives a lining sort of effect and black shadows, in my early experimenting. The brown seemed to do pretty much obvious stuff with the mini I've tried it on--dirtied it up, gave it some shadows not quite so dark as the black but entirely noticeable. Would it be an avenue to explore for weathering/aging/whatevering wood and/or leather? The flesh wash--should I be trying to hit faces and hands with it? Save it for more scantily-clad minis? Something altogether else? I've also got some Athonian Camoshade, Agrax Earthshade, and Drakenhof Nightshade. So basically a green, a brown, and a blue wash. Unless I'm totally misreading. The Athonian I haven't used. What situations should I be looking at for a greenish wash? The Agrax seems pretty comparable to Reaper's brown. Is it? I haven't used it yet. I picked it up because everyone seems to swear by it--seems like I've seen it talked about with everything from skeletons to wood to leather. Thoughts and/or advice? I tried out the Drakenhof on a wizard's pale bluish robes with the hopes of both shadowing and blue-ing up the color as well. It seemed to work on both counts (though I wasn't entirely thrilled with the mini, but nevermind that). Was that a reasonable idea? What other considerations/situations should I keep in mind with this one? Or am I totally off the reservation with all this? 2. I'm painting a piece right now, and I mixed up a nice chocolate brown for a robe. I'm getting ready to highlight and got to thinking--should I vary up my colors with highlighting? I've been aiming for very-light versions of the base color. What would happen if I tried highlighting with something else? Is that a thing? Like, go with a yellow on a brown or some such? Or a red or orange or something? I feel like this question particularly makes less sense than it did when I was thinking about it earlier.