"Hola amigo, I come to suck your blood!"

Hi everyone,

I am continuing to practice with oils, and as I have said in the last post, I am enjoying the process a lot.

The next mini is the demon, and I thought it would be interesting to show the difference in the painting process.

With oils you can you use acrylic or enamel primers.  I use Vallejo acrylic primers.  The colour of the primer depends on the result you want to achieve.  In this project I went with three types to experiment, but in my first attempt I went with black – since oil paints are very opaque it worked in my favour.

Pre-glazing is probably the most important step in this technique.  It is one step I never knew about.  Pre-glazing gives the latter layer of paint something to adhere to.

The best paints for pre-glazing are colours with high tinting power like Van Dyke Brown and Indigo. There are only a handful!

Most of the colour then has to be removed with a makeup sponge after letting the paint to set for about 10 to 15 minutes.

I call this the ‘fun process’. The first layers are like a delicate drybushing!  The paint mixes with the pre-glaze and instantly creates shadows and highlights.

The next layers are added on then feathered in with a soft brush.  The great thing is that you only need cheap synthetic brushes and sables are kind of useless.

One thing I learned is that the oil paint dictates the speed you paint at, and this forces you to chill out, relax and go with the process.  If you have only ever painted with acrylics like myself, you will have to re-learn the attitude you need to paint with.

Another thing to keep in mind is the ‘Fat over Lean’ rule.  Before I got in line, I was having a lot of difficulty.  I suggest you do some research about the nature of oils and how 2D painters use them for some foundational background.

Below are two videos that helped me get started and trouble-shoot most of the problems I had.

Below is the miniature with the cape and clothes painted up. Since I went with black, I had to minimize the highlights in order to keep the black ‘reading’ as black to the eye. I also wanted some colour in the cape, so I highlighted with light violet and light blue rather than white.

I will let you decide if I managed or not!

That is all for now.  Next week I will continue with the detailing and hopefully post the finished product.

Until the next post stay safe and have fun.

NR