Washes are a great way to make your droid or your figure's clothing appropriately dirty. When you add a wash over acrylic paint, however, there is a chance the water from the wash will also wash away your base paint too!

One way to avoid this is to paint your figure with an enamel base coat and then add the wash. Many people don't like to mess with enamels, though. So here is another option to apply a water-based wash over water-based paint.

Step 1

Make several coats of your base color. (Hopefully without losing too much detail)
Make sure each coat isTOTALLY DRY between each pass.

Step 2

Apply your wash .

Step 3

When you make your wash, wipe with a rag moistened (not soaked) with paint thinner/mineral spirits, and do it immediately before the wash has a chance to dry. A little of the base color will come off but if you have multiple coats and you don't wipe hard it should be fine.