Advice Painting A Wet Effect

[The Door Master]

Hello, I'm currently painting a model that dwells in water and was wondering if anyone has any tips on how to paint any wet or slimy effects.

Thank you. 

[TheWilddog]

Not sure how complex you want to go but a simple trick is to put a layer of gloss varnish (like the GW Ardcoat) on the parts you want to look wet.  This way the areas with the varnish look shimmery while the rest of the model is matte.  Works well with exposed gore or things like nasty Nurgle ooze.  This is the ultra easy way but leads to decent effect.

[Lysandestolpe]

What @TheWilddog said, but if you wish to punish yourself further, anything wet is basically reflecting more light than matte surfaces. It therefore has higher contrast between lights and dark. Looking for example at water painted by the impressionists, you'd see a lot of the water painted is so by placing very dark colors next to very bright colors, creating a shadow "side" and light side. Anything in close proximity is also commonly reflected on this wet surface. 

This is the fundamentals of painting both water and certain types of metals. It requires more than that to get it flawless, but this is the basic idea. 

[Killax]

Vallejo has a water effect jar that is perfect for this as a finishing touch. It dries gloss, translucent and holds form like thick (oil) paint.

You could apply it to basically any water like painted base (2d) to get that nice 3d effect.