Painting & Weathering an Orky Jet: Part 3 – Oils

While I generally prefer to use acrylic washes and weathering products, I’ve always felt oils were a better product overall. The ability to blend, smear, feather, streak, and whatever else you can think of is unmatched by acrylics or enamels.

The one thing I don’t like about them is their drying time. When speed is a concern for me, then acrylics are usually the route to go. Drying time is reduced to minutes, not hours or even days.

So it’s a trade off certainly.

Thankfully, changing my focus* with regards to speed of production and adhering to schedules on YouTube meant I could use oils as much as I wanted.

I know quite a few people have told me over the years that oils intimate them a bit. In a sense, I get that, yet in some regard I do not. Yes, there is some cost to getting oils and odorless thinner. But in many ways this hobby is a luxury, so while cost is a factor, the stacks of gray plastic most of us have in our homes indicates there is some flexibility of budget.

And the “I don’t want to mess it up” factor has always seemed like a thin veil for “I just don’t want to be bothered. Which is fine, of course. I used to say “I’m intimidated by adding lighting to a model”, but I’ve realized that’s not the case. It just doesn’t interest me. It looks cool when others do it. But I have zero interest in it. I just don’t want to be bothered.

The way I got into oils is quite simple. I got one tube of Winsor and Newton Raw Umber, and a bottle of odorless thinner. And I just started experimenting. 

My first attempts looked pretty awful honestly. However, I saw that they looked awful. It gave me the opportunity to find ways that did not work. So I kept digging, and  I found that I could clean them up and dial them back with thinners. Smudging, streaking, blending – all of it yielded different results.

When folks tell me they’re tried something once, and weren’t happy with the results, I chuckle a bit. I’ve been there.

But at some point it caused me to step back and think “how good do I really think I am?” Few people do something ONCE and are suddenly at genius level. It takes work, repetition, and thoughtful observation. And even after using oils on hundreds of builds, I find I’m still learning new things.

Give oils a try. They’re fun.

(*Short story – I gave up trying to please YouTube. Now, a model and its associated videos are done when they are done. Much more fun that way!)