Manda's (Amachan) 'Oiling Up' Project

I am getting back into this project. Because of my health, I know now I have a functional neurological disorder, I am still struggling painting and working with the really small stuff like 15mm figures for my Eastern Front project. It may improve over time and than I would get back onto that project. So I am getting back in this oily mess in order to work on developing a style for more gritty looking historical figures.

Things I learned.
Because I have been painting using the new paints and techniques on my project where I figure out what I can do with my disabilities I have learned quite a bit more. Here are some examples of what I painted in that project and a link to that project as well so you can have a look.

Precision
Less precision is required when working with oils and enamels, as it is quite easy to just put a bit of mineral spirits on your brush and remove or work the oils and enamels into the places where you want them to be. This has been very beneficial to me with my current health problems.

Reducing the Amount of Oil & Shine.
By putting the oil paint from the tube onto a paper towel first and then either use it from there if I use it straight or move the paint to a different palette with a palette knife I really reduce the amount of excess oil I have in the paint. I can then thin it using mineral spirits, this really helps reducing the shininess that I got from the oil paints at times.

Blu Tack and Solvents.
I more and more started to notice that the Blu Tack was letting go because of the solvents I use, mainly mineral spirits, with oil and enamel paints. Blu Tack is an oil based product so it is no surprise really. This has made me rethink my paint handles. The only one on the market that would technically work is the GW one, but that’s too expensive. So I decided to magnetize my painting handles. Since I use cheap glue sticks as painting handles they all have a lid I can take off and that can rotate. I took off the lid cleaned and roughed up the surface.

I was at first thinking of just sticking a bit of a magnetic pad on the top, but I was not sure that would be strong enough so I wanted to add an additional magnet for strength. Now I noticed that these had a little knob on the bottom of the top so I had to drill it out otherwise a magnet wouldn’t sit centrally. So I drilled a hole in the top, glued in a magnet and put the magnetic pad over the top. When using magnets you have to be sure that you get the poles the right way. I have a little magnet that I glued to my cutting mat ages a go, so that is my guide for aligning my poles.

And there you go, magnetized painting handles.

And I learned plenty of things that are hard to put to words as I have just gathered more experience of how oil paints go down and how to work with them.