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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?

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.

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

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.

@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.

The Other Dave wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 01, 2019 10:34 pm

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?

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

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

me_in_japan wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 02, 2019 7:51 am

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 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.

The Other Dave wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 02, 2019 8:50 am

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.

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.