Manda’s (Amachan) ‘Oiling Up’ Project

Here is the first model in this journey. It is an old Forge World Mk III Marine. I just did all the basecoats with acrylics and added some shoddy old transfers. I will see what I can do with him when all of my new paints come in.

I am changing the name of the project. Obviously ‘Oiling Up’ sounds way more fun than ‘Painting Grimdark’ does and will not at all have more people click on it (sarcasm). The reason for the change is that I am not really going to be painting in the Grimdark style, I am rather going to use the lessons learned from the Grimdark style to develop a new painting style for myself that is more gritty. The Grimdark philosophy obviously has a lot in common with my ideas. I don’t like painting in a certain style, I want to do my own thing and always have.

The title ‘Oiling Up’ obviously refers to me starting to learn how to paint with oils in combination with acrylics, enamels and even some wax paints in order to develop a style that suits me and is more gritty.

I don’t know if gritty is the right word, but I am sticking to it now….

These are the first test models I am going to use. From left to right, the first is an old Mk. III space marine from Forge World a good model to start playing around with the grimdark style. I had half a sample sprue of the Wargames Atlantic late imperial Romans laying around and thought they would be great so the second is a model I put together from that to test out some historicals with this style. The third is again from the same sprue, but for this guy I am having to do the base fully myself and he will also be holding a shield (the shield is currently getting some basecoats). I think these 3 will be a great start to my grimdark crusade.

I honestly have no clue what a space marine and a late imperial Roman legionary have in common apart from them both being from some form of empire. It is just something that came up in my head. So let me know what you think they have common….

In a recent weekender there was a mention of the Villainy Inks from Grimdark Compendium. I had never heard of them before, so I went to have a look. And what I found was a style that I have been wanting to paint as for years. I have in my time used enamel washes, especially on larger models. I have done some heavy weathering as you can see below. So it is not completely new to me, but definitely something I want to develop more. I have never used oil paints before so that will be a new thing. I am planning on ordering in a whole bunch of Abteilung 502 oil paints and add a bit more to my range of enamels. Together with that and some of the tutorials on their website I am going to find a new paint style that incorporates the grimdark and works for me as I focus more on the historicals than the sci-fi.

This is also the reason why there hasn’t been any progress on my historical projects since I really got back into the hobby. I was just trying to find my roots and these roots will be grimdark.

So this project will follow along with my progress into the grimdark.