"Oil Paints" Topic

Hi folks. Been reading the forums for some time and decided to finally make an account. I recently decided to start messing around with oil paints on my miniatures, and I loved them so much they became my medium of choice. The slow drying times makes painting much more laid back for me, and playing around with color both on the palette and the model has been great fun (especially when doing stuff like non-metallic metals). So far I've painted a group of GW skeletons, a Relicblade dragon-man, and a 15mm wizard from Splintered Light with them.
I was just wondering if anyone else here has tried them out, or thought about doing so. From what research I've done it seems like very few people are regularly using oils besides for washes.

I tried them a _very_ long time ago (in the days when the alternative was enamels). Now I use only water based paints and life is good. Having said that really good painters can do brilliant work with oils.

I wish I had the talent and knowledge of color mixing to use those.

Hi, Slow Oats! Welcome from a fellow noob :)

I've never used oils for figures, only for AFV/Mecha/terrain washes. But it's on my to-do list for 2020 (but so is RGB-lighting my scenics, so who knows?).

I've been following some PLOGs (painting logs) on other websites for ages, and as far as I can tell, the absolute standout minis are oil painted. Blending is – apparently – a dreamlike experience!

I've reached a certain level of comfort with acrylics, but I'm still unhappy with my blending & NMMs, so I'm defo looking at taking the leap this year. And not just because of colour – oils also seem to be really good at imbuing specific textile effects with a more appropriate look than I've seen acrylics do.

Have you visited CMoN & Dakka?

Hi Bigby. The blending really is superb. If you've ever watched Bob Ross (apparently there's a sort of revival going on recently with his show on youtube), you'll have a good idea of how smoothly the paints blend into each other. This allows for very subtle effects that look great for cloth, and I think the organic nature of the paint itself also helps in that regard. Same for skin tones. The thickness of the paints also helps for adding textures to the model, I've gotten some decent rust effects that way. If i can figure out how to post photos I might be able to show you what I mean. It's an extremely versatile medium.

I've not visited those sights very often, but I do stumble upon them every now and again. Some interesting stuff on both, but I don't remember finding much on oils. Maybe I'm just bad at Google.

John, interestingly enough Winsor&Newton (whose paints I use) have a line of water-soluble oil paints. I can't say about their quality, and frankly I'm skeptical, but they do exist.

The oil paints I last used were – IIRC – MIG, so pre-AK I guess? So pretty much a long time ago … maybe 10 years?

I should still have loads of them somewhere, along with some MIG pigments (e.g. "Vietnamese earth, just slightly to the left of the Ho Chi Min trail, as kicked up by the sandals of a 17-year-old VC soldier, pulling a small wooden cart …").

@ Slow Oats … how do you actually use oils on minis then?
Do you prime in acrylic and then base, shade, highlight, etc. in oil? Or do you prime & base acrylic and then use oils for everything else?

I'm really fascinated with this idea, and the timing's kinda perfect :)

I prime with black gesso, then everything else is done with oils.

I first do a "base coat" where I establish all my basic colors and values across the model. This is all rather imprecise, I'm just putting colors next to each other and blending them together willy-nilly until I'm happy. Most of the work is really being done here, actually.

I use thick paint (I keep saying it's like painting with toothpaste) so that it covers well, but I apply it thinly. This isn't about losing detail, but about making sure your paints don't over blend. When I started I would glob too much paint on, and when I blended it would all become mud! It's a good idea to wipe any excess paint off the brush before applying it to the model, to maintain control of where the color goes. I do all this with a filbert brush.

After I'm happy with all that, I move on to the detail work. Using a liner brush, I start touching up details and reinforcing highlights with very thin paint. Because thin oil paint sticks to thick oil paint, the paint will sort of sit on top of the base coat, though you can still blend them back into the base coat if you want. You can also do oil washes over wet oil, it's a great way to reinforce hard shadows such as panel lining.

I'm still figuring stuff out, but this is pretty much the basic process I've settled into.

Here's an attempt to post some photos of my dragon-man.

Edit: Never mind, I'll have to get a Flickr or something.

I've been following some PLOGs (painting logs) on other websites for ages, and as far as I can tell, the absolute standout minis are oil painted……. Have you visited CMoN & Dakka?

Hmmmm…..not in my experience.

Just went to the Golden Demon site and looked up the 2019 winners.

golden-demon.com

Looked up the individual painters and they all paint with acrylics.

Same thing at CMON. If you go to the article section on painting, all the articles deal with acrylic paints. Same with the CMON painting forum. To be fair, there is a thread about a painter who is experimenting with new oil paints. His work does look beautiful.

link

However, the painter is James Wappel and he has many painting videos on YouTube. A quick scan shows that most of his work is also in acrylics. In fact it is telling on how many of these pro painters use contrast paints.

As for blending, why would acrylic paints inherently blend worse than oil based paints? All acrylics are water based, and water is the perfect solvent for blending. In my opinion, one of the finest miniature painters is, multiple award winner, Jen Haley. Not too many people blend better than her. Check out her colour transitions on these figures:

youtu.be/R4B0prQR_eM

I'm not questioning oil paints ability to produce beautiful figures. That's clearly incorrect. And if you enjoy painting with them, then who am I to say different? But I doubt your claim that the standout minis are all oil painted. The standout minis are painted by the standout painters, regardless of their medium of choice. It's that simple. Different media require different techniques and skill sets. The brilliant painters have put in the time and honed their skills.

It ain't the paint, imo. YMMV.

"As for blending, why would acrylic paints inherently blend worse than oil based paints?"

I think the primary issue is the speed of drying with acrylics; proper use of retarding agents can help here. Most or all results with oils should be obtainable with acrylics with appropriate materials and techniques.

I use a mix of paint media … watercolour, enamel, oil as well as (these days, near ubiquitous) acrylics. Particularly on flats, I like the effects you can get with oils – like on these camels.

Phil