Citadel Inks were a formative influence on the rite of painting for me and any others of my generation who were into Games Workshop painting. Growing up I gamed very little but in our house out in the sticks of Cornwall I could often be found with brush in hand. Inks played a part in this adding luminosity and shades to models.
Nowadays GW have 'washes' with various different permutations - Agrax Earthshade, Seraphim Sepia etc, generally not as bright and really intended for shades as the colours get stronger in the recesses. They have glazes for enhancing or blending colours. Back in the day inks were meant to serve both those purposes - I'm not commenting on how successfully compared to their modern day equivalents as I can't remember but they sure did make the colours bright and rich on my Fleshhound headed Champion of Khorne.
These members of my Blood Bowl Undead team were painted with inks and indeed back at that time of my pubescence:
The pictures are crappy, my apologies but I know the bone was 'shaded' with orange ink - I'm pretty sure the purples were shaded too with inks too but I'm not sure which colour currently but noticeably the purple is very rich. Compare to skeletons painted in the 'modern' style of painting:
The red, chestnut and brown are a bit light on the ground now but all the rest look serviceable. I've even rediscovered how hard these are too get out of clothes after bursting the bubble of ink residing in the blue pot. It's exciting - on the one hand I don't want to waste them but on the other hand I can't wait how to rediscover how to reintegrate these in my painting styles and probably use them better than my younger self.
(PS. If anyone knows which paint set they came from specifically please let me know. I had a look through Orlygg's excellent blog to try and find this out (http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/retro-painting-and-modelling-or.html ) but the packaging look different on these pots )
Nowadays GW have 'washes' with various different permutations - Agrax Earthshade, Seraphim Sepia etc, generally not as bright and really intended for shades as the colours get stronger in the recesses. They have glazes for enhancing or blending colours. Back in the day inks were meant to serve both those purposes - I'm not commenting on how successfully compared to their modern day equivalents as I can't remember but they sure did make the colours bright and rich on my Fleshhound headed Champion of Khorne.
These members of my Blood Bowl Undead team were painted with inks and indeed back at that time of my pubescence:
The pictures are crappy, my apologies but I know the bone was 'shaded' with orange ink - I'm pretty sure the purples were shaded too with inks too but I'm not sure which colour currently but noticeably the purple is very rich. Compare to skeletons painted in the 'modern' style of painting:
Less colourful, more realistic but maybe a bit more boring?
Anyway this ramble does have a point. After returning to the country after being away for some years I mentioned to my brother I was back painting fantasy miniatures. He mentioned in an offhand way 'Oh I think I still have the inks somewhere?' I asked him to look, forgot about it, he then forgot about my birthday. Then three months later I got a cryptic Facebook message asking for my address. Dutifully I went to the collection office after receiving a 'we received a parcel too big for your mailbox' note and found wrapped up in a christmas light box, these bad boys...
(PS. If anyone knows which paint set they came from specifically please let me know. I had a look through Orlygg's excellent blog to try and find this out (http://realmofchaos80s.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/retro-painting-and-modelling-or.html ) but the packaging look different on these pots )
They are the later style of inks that Citadel put out in the late 80s. The original release of the inks were in a dropper bottle before the switch to black versions of the paint pots. You can find labelled and unlabelled versions of the inks from this period.
ReplyDeleteThanks Orlygg for this! I was finding it difficult finding pics of my pots making it difficult to trace their vintage
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