It’s not called “panel line” for nothing it seems.

I wonder if you could do this with thinned contrast paints, because he is using a very very tiny brush to make the initial ‘lines’ while using physics do the rest.

I build historical kits as well as this side of the hobby. A pin wash is a more focussed approach to creating shading as opposed to applying the wash liberally over the whole surface of the kit. Once more or less dry the surface is cleaned too remove excess wash bar that around the detail and in recesses. I tend to use paper towel for large areas or cotton buds or smaller stuff like GW kits.

The key is applying these solvent based washes over a gloss varnish (preferably acrylic based), otherwise you can end up with the wash staining the underlying paint and acting as a glaze/filter. The advantage of having the gloss surface is that you can apply decals and reduce the silvering that can arise from a matt surface.

Once you’ve completed the washes I’d then flatten the whole thing with matt varnish.

Question is – has anyone used this for Space Marines (not just big tanks)? And does it work as well as this video suggests it should?

Any ideas for colour combinations? Would dark brown/grey be better than black?

yes and yes.

Marines are made for it.

I’ve gone over to pin-washing all my marines. It’s a bit more work in some ways and easier in others. It adds a few work stages, principally adding a gloss varnish before pin washing and longer drying times. If you work in batches though it speeds up the time to finish individual marines.

Colourwise it depends on the colour scheme. At a pinch black works for everything, but can come across stark on certain colours so what you might want to think about is a very dark version of your base colour. Ultimately its down to your taste.

You have options in terms of what you use as the wash. You could use as basic GW/AP wash over a gloss coat and still have a degree of control in applying and cleaning. Result is okay. Or you can go with enamel pin/panel line washes, works a bit better. Currently I find oil washes do it the best for me, but they do require the most drying time.

It’s not a difficult technique, but requires a tiny bit of practice to get right the way you want it so its useful to try out on a couple of marines first.

Things to watch out for are:

• patience, do rush things and rather wait a day to go through each step. Its very tempting to crack on with the next step before things dry properly.
• don’t over tinker with the the result. Its easy to try get wrapped up in fine tuning a tiny detail which no one will ever see and then by accident clean off all the pin wash.
• you can clean up mistakes, but not endlessly as at some point the white spirit will go through the varnish if you keep rubbing the surface.

Attached is my Ultramarine 001 test for pin washing. Its very close up so doesn’t do the effect fully justice, but that’s the best I can do at short notice with a mobile.