Painting models with oil paints

I started this experiment with oil paints some time ago now but, for one reason or another, it’s taken this long to paint a single miniature.

The last step is to work on the anvil and hammer. This step I’ve been putting off as I have no experience of painting non metallic metal. There is a silver oil in the set that I bought, but I’m determined to not use it (at least this time).

I’ll start by mixing up some black, white and blue to give some various shades of grey. My thinking is the blue will help both with a steel look and also the sky reflection for the particularly shiny parts.

For the lower part of the anvil, I’ve tried giving it a grey and then a darker grey in the shadows. I’ve added some lighter grey to the feet and then tried blending this together. Seemed to work OK.

For the hammer face and the top of the anvil, I’m thinking that this would be the part that takes a pounding so will try stippling the oil paint on, to see how that looks. This was just a mix of the various shades of grey with some blue in places. White on the edges just to try to give the illusion of sharp reflection.

Time to let the oil paint dry.

Once it had, I’ve given it a coat of varnish which, unfortunately, left a couple of very small bubbles. You can’t see them with the naked eye (at least not my eyes) but looking at the photos, they are there. 🙁

This has been an interesting start to my oil paints experiment and one that I will certainly be continuing. I’ve been really pleased how easy it was to get smooth transitions on the larger areas, such as the apron and, in particular, the white shirt. I’m also very pleased with the metal work.

Having to mix the skin colour up myself and apply it was daunting. I’m reasonably happy with the result, at least the shading around the muscles, but this will take a lot more work to get right.

The trousers require a bit more pop. I found shading and blending around the folds in the cloth quite challenging. Something I also noticed when I tried the leather work, particularly on the gloves and belt. It looks very clumsy here and I really struggled to get the blend correct.

I’ve got my eye on a mostly painted model where I have used acrylics but now want to test out how oil washes might work. I’ll take a look at that soon.