Stormcast Sequitors - Part III

 

And _my_ wood splitter.

This post has very little new to it in terms of visuals, but I've been playing with oil paints and though it deserved some notes.

Right off the bat: the yellow I tried on a shield (not shown) absolutely sucks! I think that's true for yellow paint of just about any medium. It covers poorly, does not smooth out well, and any hint of some other colour contamination is immediately visible. With acrylics it's not so bad for me because I can just use multiple layers to build up a solid foundation. Oils don't try quickly enough for that, so an undercoat of white probably would help. I've actually stopped painting the shields on the other models to allow the oils to cure there slightly before coating with Purity Seal and going back in with acrylics.

Magenta, as kind of an opposite, covers sometimes far too well! Only the smallest amount of it is needed, and I suspect the same with red. It completely overwhelms what it's mixed in with, so need to really keep its usage minimal.

I've been slopping too much paint on in general to start with. That's ok, I wanted to get a feel for the paints to begin with. Having an unbiased initial approach done, I then looked at some info online for the "proper" way to use them on models. Marco Frisoni of course is one of the more popular sources to look for, and indeed gave me the invaluable tip #1: use two brushes. One to apply the paint, and a second (dry) brush to smooth the paint out. I did this on the weapon, and the blending is so much nicer, plus requires so much less paint compared to what I was doing: thinner paint layers should cure faster, obscure less detail, and generally respond better to the brush. It was this tip that has started to make using oils so much better already.

Thus far I've only tried detail painting in about one area of a single model. I suspect that I will much prefer acrylics for details - the level of control with the brush seems just easier for very small details, and the oils are kind of thick for that purpose. I will still try to find a face to paint with oils though, just for the anticipated exercise in frustration that will be, but I could be surprised.

I'm still using some old brushes for the oils. Needing to clean them with white spirits is probably not doing them any favours, but the brushes weren't in the best shape anyway. Better brushes might indeed make using oils much better - but I'll leave off that until I'm more comfortable with the medium. On the topic of white spirits: that stuff is still too smelly for me to be working with, so it will be for brush cleaning only! I'm aware this might make working oils on miniatures more difficult, but quite honestly if I'm that sensitive to the smell, it's not worth the health risk. I'm basically just having fun with oils, and don't intend to be using them to replace acrylics across my miniature painting hobby. I will, however, probably buy a canvas soon and play around with portraiture.

I think I've basically decided to stop with the oils on the Sequitors now. I painted the armour in blues just to see how it would look - the broad surfaces to work with seemed appropriate. I kind of just want the models done now, so forcing myself to continue with oils will have diminishing motivational returns. Large surfaces can be fun to work with though, so I had a thought on another model to use for experimentation: a plastic Contemptor Dreadnought. I have a spare - I can try to reposition it from the frankly horrible default pose, and then paint it up with oils. I want to start that now, but probably need to wait three weeks for reasons.

-- silly painter.