@yoshi, superb work mate! I could recommend doing the blacks in oils, its child splay compared to acrylics and after two of three models of practice you won’t spend more than 15 min per mini painting black to TT level. Just a page back there is my Yakuza gunman in black suit painted in oils.
Now thats an interesting proposition ! Never worked with oils before. What brand of paints do you suggest ? Do I need special brushes ? I am painting with Windsor & Newton Series 7 now. Expensive little bastards. Anything else I should get ?
Oils are completely different medium, and similarly as the case is with acrylics different people have different approaches. If you want to go down the rabbit hole of YT videos, you’ll find tones of them (and each preaches different things), I’d recommend James Wappel (his videos are superb but rarely shorter than 3h), Vince Vinturella and most notably Dmitry Fesechko.
Personally, I’d recommend you this:
1. Paints.
If you want only try oils on that black, you need 2-5 colours depending how fancy you want to go. In such a case I’d buy W&N’s Winton series (ca.5 EURO per 37 ml) or W&N’s Artist Oils (ca. 8-9 EURO per 37 ml, but some more intensive colours cost more than 20). The Wintons are hobby grade paint, they are ok., the artist grade paints have much more pigment (like MUCH, orders of magnitude more) and are usually single pigment colours (they are much more predictable while mixing, not so important with black and white).
If you want to try something more than just black, you may want to try a starter set – I think I saw 12 small (12 ml?) Winton tubes for like 20 or 30 EURO.
In case you’re operating on a very tight budget, you can try some Chinese no-names, you’ll find multicolour sets for 5 EURO but experience may vary…
2. Brushes.
Almost all you know about brushes for acrylics is irrelevant in case of oils.
DON’T use your Series 7 with oils! They won’t destroy it but you’ll never be able to use it with acrylics again – you really don’t need such brush for this work.
What you need is a set of synthetic brushes from hobby or art store (like 15 brushes for 8 EURO type). Size is less important – since you’re going to paint mostly armour I’d recommend sizes 6-8. For comfortable work with 2-3 colours you usually want to have 3-4 brushes.
You can also use your old sable brushes, but there is no coming back to acrylics with them.
3. Other things to buy.
You have to buy either white spirit or odourless thinner – mostly to clean your brushes afterwards, but you can use it as an eraser (in case of mistake) or to thin your paints should you want to.
Other useful thing is a make-up sponge (see below).
You can also think about some additives which make paint dry faster or make it translucent). They are cool but not necessary for the first time IMO.
4. Little things I learnt to date.
I painted just a couple minis with oils, but here is what I learnt so far:
Use like 20% of paint you think you need, especially with artist grade paints. The more paint you apply the bigger trouble you bring upon yourself in every imaginable way.
Get yourself some good handle to grip your mini, you’ll erase any wet oil paint with your fingers like it was never there.
There are no mistakes in oil painting. Whatever goes wrong, just dip your brush in whiter spirit and get back to the last dry layer.
Never put your working brush to the thinner or spirit, unless you’re completely done with painting – use only some paper or cotton towel to clean your brush while painting (just wipe).
The colour will be most vibrant/deepest in places you first put it – contrary to how acrylics work, they leave most pigment in place your brush lifts from the surface.
5. How I attacked black on my Yakuza dude from previous page.
– White primer (Vallejo polyurethane),
– Paint all the things you want to be black with (in my case) 4:1 mixture of Lamp black and Phthalo blue (USE LESS PAINT).
– Wait 10-15 minutes
– With make-up sponge wipe off previously applied paint (it will stay in the shadows),
– In places you want brightest highlights apply dots or thin lines of your final highlight (in my case it was some mixture of white and Naples yellow),
– Take clean brush and blend your colours on the mini,
– When you’re happy with the result leave it to dry (drying times vary vastly, I usually leave my minis for 48h+ just to be sure),
– Come back with edge highlights, deepest shadows and maybe most eye-catching highlights (just retouches – less paint dries faster), after this dries varnish and finish details with acrylics.
If you want to see some pictures including WIPs you can find them in my projects’ entries:
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