"By popular demand - painting with enamels, part 1." Topic
7 Posts
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olicana | 14 May 2020 6:08 a.m. PST |
Without wanting to big myself up too much, I've had over a dozen emails in the last two weeks asking for detailed advice on painting with enamels and, strangely to my mind, about my painting station, lighting, etc. Consequently, I'm doing a series of blog posts which, I hope, will cover most of the bases. The painting with enamels step by step will be on a unit of Coldstream Guards for the Peninsular but the techniques are pretty much the same for every period I paint. First up is, 'The Set Up'. It's a very general piece about my painting station, brushes, lighting, white spirit, PPE, etc., but the links will become very much more about enamels and technique very soon, so please bear with me. link I'm not sure how interesting you'll find it but, there are some tick boxes at the bottom of every post and if for you it's "Not my bag", that's the box to tick. Regards, James |
Aethelflaeda was framed | 14 May 2020 7:15 a.m. PST |
I pretty much used enamels exclusively for about 20 years, only to find acrylics did the exact same job for me and my cleanup and waste disposal was less of an issue. I do sometimes miss the smell. Wooden model airplane dope was very banana fragrant…and toxic enough to bring down a passing fly in midair that flew over my workspace and hit the fumes….open the window! I still use oils for art painting on canvas or wood, where the dry time delay is very useful for blending on a flat surface, but I don't bother with that on a 28mm fig, dry brushing the high relief, washes in the low, achieves the same effect. I look forward to seeing where the oil based enamels might provide an advantage I have overlooked. |
emckinney | 14 May 2020 9:54 a.m. PST |
I'm painting some Ad Astra Games starships with enamels right now. Mostly because I have Testors spray paint in the hill color I want to use. Having their Model Masters enamels out of production is annoying … |
olicana | 14 May 2020 10:09 a.m. PST |
I still use oils for art painting on canvas or wood, where the dry time delay is very useful for blending on a flat surface, but I don't bother with that on a 28mm fig, dry brushing the high relief, washes in the low, achieves the same effect. I don't use either technique very much. I drybrush furry things but not much else. Except for painting tanks and basing, I don't wash much either, and if I do I use ink. This is how I paint, no drybrushing or washing in evidence:
I look forward to seeing where the oil based enamels might provide an advantage I have overlooked. As for better or worse, advantage over disadvantage, etc., I don't think it has to be one way or the other. It's what you feel comfortable with. I get reasonable results with enamels, so I'll stick with them. I'm not doing the posts to convert anyone. I'm just answering requests from my readership. |
Schlesien | 14 May 2020 12:47 p.m. PST |
I look forward to seeing how I can improve my enamel painting technique. |
Slow Oats | 15 May 2020 7:44 a.m. PST |
Never painted with enamels. Recently I switched to oils and I can't see myself ever looking back. It's cool to see people using different mediums. Thanks for the post. Edit: I heard someone say that you should use cheap synthetic brushes because you don't want to wreck a good natural hair brush. But then everywhere else told me that I need a natural hair because the thinner will wreck the synthetic stuff. Then I find out that people make high end synthetic brushes for use with oils! So the whole deal with brushes and thinner is quite confusing to me. I recently got a very good synthetic brush for detail work, and so far the thinner doesn't seem to hurt it in any way. So I think as long as you maintain your brushes well the thinner shouldn't hurt them. |
olicana | 15 May 2020 8:55 a.m. PST |
I think it's safe to say that thinners wrecks brushes, regardless. I know of at least one person who, after washing his brushes in thinners, washes them again in conditioning shampoo – he swears by it – but it seems like too much trouble for me. |
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