Reply To: [unofficial weekender] SUNDAY?!

[blinky465 17028xp 1]

I think I’m going to try oils.

Yes, just about every other miniature painter on Youtube has been raving about how awesome painting with oils is. And I’ve not been convinced – til now. I discovered a while back that zenith highlighting can not only look awesome, and not only really brings your minis to life but – if you’re brave enough to allow yourself – leaving lots of dark areas also speeds up painting time.

For example, here’s a mini I painted a while back when I first discovered zenith priming. It took me all I had not to paint over every area with base coat colours. I could never imagine leaving black areas on the face – the one part of the mini I wanted to draw attention to; it just felt wrong, not painting it all!

But once I built up the confidence to leave dark areas, my painting really sped up! After all, I could confidently leave the undersides of arms and legs black, knowing they’d be ok. Suddenly, about 25% – 30% of my mini was already done, after the zenith base priming stage! Just paint what you can see – and if only two-thirds of your mini is visible from a view point, you’ve just cut your painting time by a third!

I’ve got to the point now where I’m ok with my painting. It’s not stunning, but it’s good enough to be quite happy with. A bit cartoony, sure, but I like the high contrast look (and, seriously, they look much better IRL, since the camera does tend to pick up on every little fault and error in the painting!)

But one thing I always struggled with OSL. Adding it at the end of a painting session felt too much like “destroying” a paint job. And when I tried to add it, it was always a bit “half-hearted” because I don’t want to over-paint my lovely black-lining and all those nice, bright highlights I’d spent so much time over. I also never quite went bright enough with it – instead of nice, vibrant bright patches, they tended to just look discoloured (instead of a bright light shining on a mini, my OSL tended to look more like spilled gravy stains).

 

But this video has changed everything for me.

This guy *starts* with OSL. And he uses oils. And they blend beautifully. And they’re super-opaque. And he’s really messy, and fast, and just throws it around. And by doing the OSL first, he can also tidy things up at the end if he likes.

And the end result looks stunning. And he painted about five goblins in an hour and a half.

I think I need to try oils.