You should try painting the entire model with them. I would call this using oil washes. Still a really great technique no doubt but you can paint some incredible blends very quickly with oils. Give it a go! Great vid as always though, I don't want to come across as angry as some folks in the comments!
100% agree or even use acrylics as a base/block in then go over with oils. It's something I really enjoy myself Marco turned alot... Of people into oils with his videos over the last two years or so and he does not get the shout outs he deserves.
Check out James Wappel as well. His videos got me into going full oil on miniatures. There is also a couple of super informative videos by Dmitry Fesechko that are worth watching. These days, I don't even want to use acrylics with a paintbrush except for some pretty specific things. Mostly, as YAG says, I use acrylics to block in certain high transparency colors where I need a high degree of vibrant opacity. The very fast drying time of the acrylics is a big boon here. The other exception is metallics simply because I don't have metallic oil paints but I'm looking to try those out soon too.
Oils make for great blending but do make for great washes. When I want to paint something fast I tend to prime white, army painter speed paint everything, then seal with gloss varnish. I follow that with various oil washes, and let them sit for a long while. Then I come back and with a q-tip and mineral spirits I clean off the excess oil wash from places I don't want it. Also you can clean detail spots, make water/rust stains etc by using a brush with mineral spirits and pulling the oil wash around. If I'm going to do layer highlights being honest I skip washes altogether. I just start with black, typically a quick drybrush of grey so my aging eyes can see the details. Then I just start from the darkest colors in the recesses and work my way up to my highlights cutting paint on my wet palette as I go. I really enjoy this for Orks because by hand mixing each layer of paint I get some natural variety in the skin tones.
Always have a soft spot for kroot, lucky enough to have a forge world Carnosaur. I remember young me being terrified of them after reading the story of them eating peoples hearts in the original Tau codex.
I clearly remember reading about them slaughtering some eldar, specifically it talked about one of them thinking they might come out of it alive before a kroot tore one of their heads off, and the last thing they see is the kroot tearing open their ribs and eating her heart. Proper scary for a young teenage me!
me too. I'm going to do a tau army when the new book drops I'm likely going to start a tau army mainly for the kroot. also they're one of the only none horde xenos armies (craftworld eldar being the other) I don't have the patience to paint horde armies, so I stick to elite armies for the most part. sadly this means most of the armies I've ever collected have been space marines. not to knock space marines, I actually really like painting them.
Interesting. I´ve been combining Acrylic and Oil Color techniques for many years now. I think you should try doing all of the highlighting with oil colors as well some time, due to their properties I find blending and smooth transitions work much faster and easier than with acrylic colors. I use acrylics always as a base and for a rough preshading and do most of the finer details and skin tones with oils. As a bonus, if you f... up at some point, you can just wipe the oils layer and start over ,while the acrylic base layers are preserved. Anyway, impressive paint job. Big fan, I really enjoy your videos!
Yeeees, blending with oils is just amazing, almost magical! Gone are the days of multiple layers of glazing, thank god. My grandma paints on canvas as her hobby, and she always said that I was missing out on oils until I finally tried them a year ago and will never look back. Right now I'm experimenting painting some Orks with almost 100% oils and I'm really enjoying it.
also worth noting if you are a first time oil wash user, varnishing the mini first can be a good technique, as you won't mess up the acrylic underneath, and also you can use more white spirit to remove the oil wash as well. This is actually how I was taught to use them with model vehicles. I have not tried it on minis yet though, and if you can do this without the varnish step, it would be preferable for me, as it's one less step.
I have some Winsor & Newton oil paints but I've only used them for washes so far. I really wanna challenge myself one day and try them on a whole mini, including blending them.
If you thin your first base layer to a watery consistency and apply it over a black and white zenithal/value sketch, it'll be like supercontrast. You can then highlight with thicker oils and blend while it's drying. The thinned paint drys faster too because there's less paint on the model. I do pseudo batch painting by focusing on one model until a point that I need it to dry, then do the same with another
A 6K resolution printer from anycubic just went onto the market, and a monstrosity of an 8K is out there now too. Huge price point on that one, and physically huge.
Top end resin printers are every bit as good as plastic miniatures are, in fact, the studio models GW shows off are 3d printed prototypes. Forgeworld also uses 3d printed miniatures to form their molds. Even affordable resin printers are very close to other miniatures to the point of being almost indistinguishable for reasonable uses.
Jay, oils as washes are great, but you're just scratching the surface, as they are amaaaazing for blending, and they are generally really vibrant, you should definitely try painting more complex stuff, like, I don't know, a NMM sword or something like that.
The paint job looks great! Oils can be tricky, but once you get the hang of them they're super awesome. What I like to do is prime a model with a lighter colour, get some good quality staining oil colours (they're mostly dark tones, so great for shadows) take a big brush full of thinner, and kinda "smother" a model in them, not super thick, but enough for total coverage. If you've seen James Wappel's videos, I'm talking about his first step, the Pre-Glaze. Then I wait about 5-10 minutes, it depends on the colour and even the brand sometimes, before I take some makeup sponges and q-tips and wipe it all off. The oil will not only have stained the primer, but it will stay in the recesses, instantly creating perfect depth of shadows and a zenithal-like basecoat! I usually tend to then continue painting with oils, but next time I do this I wanna try letting it dry just after the Pre-Glaze and then varnishing and doing the rest with transparent acrylics to see how that works out.
Managed a sick NMM crimson fist with crisp double reflections easy with oils. I absolutely love them. Paired acrylic detailing they give a beautiful look
This, janes wappel has so much content on painting with oils. There’s a bit of a learning curve when switching acrylics to oils, but it’s a much more relaxing to use oils for me than acrylics.
Jay, you can't be doing this to me. I can't go out again to buy another set of hobby tools/paints. You are torturing my wallet here, please have mercy!
My first real try with miniature painting was a death guard kit a few years back and I had a heck of a time with the death guard green. I just thought I was crazy! Next time I do death guard I’ll have to try something else lol
Oil painter here. I'm going to give you 2 big tips - First, get yourself a bottle of liquin. This is oil medium with a bunch of drying salts in it to make curing faster. Cut your oil paint with 10-20% or so before thinning with spirits. If you do this correctly, with the levels of paint thickness you want in miniature painting, instead of looking at a week or more drying time, you should be mostly dry in 24 hours. I'm fully confident in a full cure in 4 days with my technique, and half that time "just to be safe". Second, don't forget fire safety. Your brush cleaning rags are *exactly* the oily rags you where warned about as a kid. You must put these things in a fire safe storage container. Putting oil paint on a cardboard palette is popular in modelling circles for some reason (this is actually a terrible idea) and if you're going to do it (I can't recommend strongly enough that you don't) you must also treat this cardboard in the same manner. Don't just wad this stuff up and throw it in the trash, that absolutely can cause a fire.
I love your videos and painting & always look forward to your stuff! I haven't tried oils on minis yet. I'd be a little nervous about it chemically & have to research more. I've seen illustrators work in acrylic 1st and then oils on top but never in reverse (adding more acrylic on top of oil), or sealing them, as the extremely different drying times can cause cracking down the line. I'd suggest trying thinning oils with Liquin (a medium windsor newton makes it) as opposed to straight mineral oil. Liquin is made for thinning for glazing, mineral oil can be used to strip/remove paint which would be bad long term, it forces pigment to break with the binder. Also different pigments within oils dry at different rates (cadmium for example is very slow and dries in layers itself, so even tho top layer looks dry, it may shift over time if trapped under a dry acrylic or sealer layer). I have canvases painted where I was too liberal with thinning with just mineral oil and after a few years it looks not as good. I would also definitely be extra careful when handling or getting on your skin, as the pigments used in higher grade paints are toxic. I'm curious to see more where painters are using oils on minis, just still wrapping my brain around it :) Thanks for sharing your work!
I know Marco Frisone of NJM avoids using a black primer as it desaturates the colours. Not sure what colour would work best for green, maybe blue or ochre?
Just was working on some Kroot myself and so happened upon this video. Great stuff! I love the Kroot sculpts, even as old as they are they have so much character and are easy to personalize. I've finished up my carnivores, now need to acquire a Krootox and some hounds. Have loved playing them in KT as well.
Holly ....! i just watched this video and wow thank you J i recently joined your channel i learned tons of knowledge from you keep creating more and thank you and your team so much.
Heh... ask the older guys. Many of us were painting stuff with Revell/Testors enamels. Not the same, but fairly same idea: organic solvent based paints. They definitely have their own nature and techniques: they eat your brushes, they blend very nicely and dry a bit slower (good and bad. Layering and washes are 3-5 hour jobs, not 5 minutes to dry). I think the "best" now is a combination of the techniques and tools - like you're doing! "all oil" approach means that basecoating is an overnight job. I messed up many a model airplane applying another colour too soon. And the solvent sometimes messes up the plastics below - clouded many canopies too, for instance. And so on. So it was a revelation when I picked up proper acrylic paints and painted with them. Even the Ral Partha paints were much easier to handle and yielded quicker results (which, for starting painters, means quicker feedback loops for learning) than organic solvent based paints. I think they have great uses - pin washing, lining, recess shading. Griming. Things that benefit from long blend times. But using oil paints as a base coat seems like terrible use of time. Kinda like applying primer with a brush! My current projects follow a similar process as yours: primer and acrylics on airbrush for what you need to apply efficiently and broadly. Then acrylic application in broad areas. Recess shades (especially tricky sections) are with oil/enamel. I'm sure painters more proficient with oils would get a lot more mileage out of that tool!
Felix also has versions of the Forge world kroot things which are really good, i highly recommend printing them out and giving it a go. Massive fan of yours and kroot so this is the perfect video for me!
I bought oils a while ago to do the wash thing. I tried it on some space wolf reivers and it messed them up bad, user error of course (24 hours is too long to wait for the wipe off). Like you, I never got around to fixing them. I am in the middle of painting the kammandos from octarius. After watching this great video, you have given me the insperation to try again. thanks!
Oils are amazing. I don't paint anything without at least some oils at this point. You should try doing more with the oils!! I highly recommend trying a full model with just oils (after priming, of course) So much fun doing wet on wet with them.
Next time try maximizing use of the oil paints to paint and blend the model in that base coating step. You might be amazed. Yes they take overnight to dry, but on that painting evening I get much more done, than I could with acrylics. And with far less stress, because of the very relaxing drying times on the brush and model. Marco Frisoni and James Wappel get recommended a lot for oil paints but I would also like to point to Dmitry Fesechko. He made three incredibly useful oil painting tutorials.
I'm going to agree with everything you said. Wappel is the guy that got me into oil in minis and Dmitry was particularly informative. I'll add a tip that I don't think those guys really talked about though - Get yourself a bottle of liquin. This is oil medium with a bunch of drying salts in it to make curing faster. Cut your oil paint with 10-20% or so before thinning with spirits. If you do this correctly, with the levels of paint thickness you want in miniature painting, instead of looking at a week or more drying time, you should be mostly dry in 24 hours. I'm fully confident in a full cure in 4 days with my technique, and half that time "just to be safe". And just to put it out there for any novices that are wanting to try this - don't forget fire safety. Your brush cleaning rags are exactly the oily rags you where warned about as a kid. You must put these things in a fire safe storage container. Putting oil paint on a cardboard palette is popular in modelling circles for some reason (this is actually a terrible idea) and if you're going to do it (I can't recommend strongly enough that you don't) you must also treat this cardboard in the same manner. Don't just wad this stuff up and throw it in the trash, that absolutely can cause a fire.
Great video and content. The models looked amazing! I've just ordered a load of oils and artist white spirit to give these oil washes ago :) In your videos you use tan a lot, what brand is it?
would be interested in you trying to wet blend with oils and showing us your struggles - maybe non metallic and cloth on a complicated model you wouldn't want to blend with acrylic. I've watched a few things but would be cool to see what I would likely exp. if I tried. Thanks!
A uv light in a box with the wet oils dries them in about 2 hours max...depending on original oil content...only use permanent pigments for this technique. Non colorfast pigments can change hue and even color.
they look great. I bought some windsor black and brown, but I accidentally bought white spirit that wasn't artist grade, so I never got to use them. as I'm doing black templar now, I don't have a lot of use for them, and the soft black from secret weapon is perfect for shading loin cloths and stuff like that. When I got back to my death Guard though, I'll likely try oil wash then (although similarly, the baby poop from secret weapon is great on death guard) I really rate the secret weapon tech paints. they all have different uses. the "drying blood" is actually perfect for when you want blood spatter on bases, that's not fresh. it's the perfect tech paint for emulating drying blood. It's best to read the description on them, as they all do different things. some are great washes, some are specific purpose tech paints (like the drying blood) for instance the stone wash is absolutely perfect for when you want to do stone work on terrain. it gives it that slightly green tinted, aged looking stone with one coat.
Oil paints take longer to master but once you do everything looks just better… specially when you don’t have a lot of time. If you just want base coat and oil wash the miniature will look already game ready and if you want to upgrade it then you can do highlights. You can always work the highlights with the oils!
I think Kroot are really neat, even have played against someone using a majority army of them back in 8th. As for oil paints though, I think they'd work well with terrain? Especially "older" as in war torn terrain, an example would be the old forgeworld city battle tiles and the specific one with the blown up rhino on it.
If you do this make sure you cover your solvent when you’re not using it and you’re in a well ventilated room or outside! Even with “odorless” solvents
Oils are a pretty useful tool but personally I've never really gotten on with them, the main thing for me is I like getting my minis painted quick, and the long drying time conflicts with this. I use enamel washes in a similar way, and their much faster drying time fits well with my painting style, but I would still say oils are generally better if the drying time isn't a problem to you. Also worst paint GW does imo is phonecian purple, it's a base paint yet is thinner and has worse coverage than the layer purples. I had struggled trying to wet blend with it due to how weak the pigment was, in the end I got naggaroth night which has much better coverage. Corax white gets a bad rap as the worst citadel paint, I've never had a problem with it, I think a lot of people just have it mistaken for the old ceramite white which even new was like cottage cheese. I think maybe some early pots of corax white were like that but they've since improved. As for kroot, their history behind the scenes has been quite interesting, they actually existed since around rogue trader/ 2nd edition 40k so actually predate the Tau in terms of presence in lore. They were made auxiliaries to the Tau as what basically amounted to a consolation prize, as they along with vespid were at the time in contention with the Tau to become the next faction in 40k, with Tau winning out. It's interesting as Tau were originally envisioned as the 40k equivalent to the fantasy battle lizardmen but gradually grew into their own thing over the course of their development, so it's easy to see where kroot may have originally fit. I think part of the reason why kroot didn't succeed is their gimmicks aren't super unique compared to other factions, where their space barbarian aesthetic is already handled by the orks, and the evolutionary adaptation is already covered by tyranids, they're a combination of two niches rather than a new one. That being said, I like the idea of mercenary factions, nowadays souping is so heavily de-incentivized it'd be cool to have smaller niche factions that could ally without breaking army bonuses. Perhaps kroot could work for xenos, daemons or renagades and heretics for chaos, and squats for imperium would work.
Great video - thanks! It really helps to remove some fears linked with oil paints. I also heard that oil paints can be easily used for blending while they are not fully dried (this 30-45 min period that you mentioned). Did you try this technique?
I wouldn't call oils harder or more complicated...just different. You can achieve wet blends in seconds with oils compared to acrylics. And after watching James Wappel's videos I've abandoned acrylics and work exclusively in oil.
You just blew my mind with that tin foil trick haha. I have a ton of oil paints from doing paintings but have never used them on minis. This makes me want to try it out. Great stuff!
Excellent execution! Been watching since you guys were on Hobby Time in the Murder Basement. Thanks for the quality content and hard work! Kroot were such a good choice to showcase oil washes. Good move! The natural colouration really emphasizes oil paints ability to create an environmental gradation. What kind of brush care do you need to do when working with oils? I have natural hair brushes that I work with well, but I think spirits will strip out the natural oils there. Should you use throw away synthetics? I don't really want to create even more waste from the hobby... Would Nick consider doing a 3D printer setup or troubleshooting/tuning video maybe? Those prints turned out very nice! I know there's a few different manufacturers, but whatever he's working with. Even just solutions to common problems? Also, a secret. There's no "wrong" way to use your medium in art. That guy should go outside and maybe touch some grass or something...
I know I'm a little late to the party, but I just want to say that I've always kind of liked Kroot. I do think that they should be playable by any xenos army with one exception: tyranids. It just wouldn't make sense. GSC sure, but not tyranids.
I’ve been advocating for a Mercenaries codex for a long time. It would be a great way to bring in lesser Xenos races. Also they could do squads of humans and Eldar corsairs. And maybe even the return of Squats.
I like the Kroot belonging to the Tau, but I would love to see them get their own supplement with more (and better) models. Not all of us have access to 3D printers :(
I keep pondering going with a heavily converted force using the Kroot to make a fantasy force of some sort for other games. There used to be a good conversion guide for shifting kroot into archers
I think you might have a weird pot of death guard green as mine is fine - as you say its a base colour so is thick - maybe someone swapped labels on yours and you really have the air version?
You should try painting the entire model with them. I would call this using oil washes. Still a really great technique no doubt but you can paint some incredible blends very quickly with oils. Give it a go! Great vid as always though, I don't want to come across as angry as some folks in the comments!
100% agree or even use acrylics as a base/block in then go over with oils. It's something I really enjoy myself Marco turned alot... Of people into oils with his videos over the last two years or so and he does not get the shout outs he deserves.
@@yagsipcc287 Marco is probably one of the best painter's on RUclips. He doesn't get enough mentions from other channels
Check out James Wappel as well. His videos got me into going full oil on miniatures. There is also a couple of super informative videos by Dmitry Fesechko that are worth watching.
These days, I don't even want to use acrylics with a paintbrush except for some pretty specific things. Mostly, as YAG says, I use acrylics to block in certain high transparency colors where I need a high degree of vibrant opacity. The very fast drying time of the acrylics is a big boon here. The other exception is metallics simply because I don't have metallic oil paints but I'm looking to try those out soon too.
Oils make for great blending but do make for great washes. When I want to paint something fast I tend to prime white, army painter speed paint everything, then seal with gloss varnish. I follow that with various oil washes, and let them sit for a long while. Then I come back and with a q-tip and mineral spirits I clean off the excess oil wash from places I don't want it. Also you can clean detail spots, make water/rust stains etc by using a brush with mineral spirits and pulling the oil wash around.
If I'm going to do layer highlights being honest I skip washes altogether. I just start with black, typically a quick drybrush of grey so my aging eyes can see the details. Then I just start from the darkest colors in the recesses and work my way up to my highlights cutting paint on my wet palette as I go. I really enjoy this for Orks because by hand mixing each layer of paint I get some natural variety in the skin tones.
Always have a soft spot for kroot, lucky enough to have a forge world Carnosaur. I remember young me being terrified of them after reading the story of them eating peoples hearts in the original Tau codex.
I clearly remember reading about them slaughtering some eldar, specifically it talked about one of them thinking they might come out of it alive before a kroot tore one of their heads off, and the last thing they see is the kroot tearing open their ribs and eating her heart. Proper scary for a young teenage me!
@@Braver-Seven Yeh man I think thats the one. Scared the willies out of me as a kid!
me too. I'm going to do a tau army when the new book drops I'm likely going to start a tau army mainly for the kroot. also they're one of the only none horde xenos armies (craftworld eldar being the other) I don't have the patience to paint horde armies, so I stick to elite armies for the most part. sadly this means most of the armies I've ever collected have been space marines. not to knock space marines, I actually really like painting them.
@@Braver-Seven jesus christ, holy shit.
1:22 “Disaster struck” You and I seem to have completely different definitions of a disaster 😂
I actually think it looks goog
Yeah, strong case of things didn't turn out as intended, but still good.
Interesting. I´ve been combining Acrylic and Oil Color techniques for many years now. I think you should try doing all of the highlighting with oil colors as well some time, due to their properties I find blending and smooth transitions work much faster and easier than with acrylic colors. I use acrylics always as a base and for a rough preshading and do most of the finer details and skin tones with oils. As a bonus, if you f... up at some point, you can just wipe the oils layer and start over ,while the acrylic base layers are preserved. Anyway, impressive paint job. Big fan, I really enjoy your videos!
I was about to comment the same thing.
I just figured this out on the weekend; being able to quickly and easily undo any errors really made the final steps stress free.
I was going to say more or less the same thing, mostly due to being encouraged by friends who do scale model work.
I've used oil before, just not on a mini
Yeeees, blending with oils is just amazing, almost magical! Gone are the days of multiple layers of glazing, thank god. My grandma paints on canvas as her hobby, and she always said that I was missing out on oils until I finally tried them a year ago and will never look back.
Right now I'm experimenting painting some Orks with almost 100% oils and I'm really enjoying it.
also worth noting if you are a first time oil wash user, varnishing the mini first can be a good technique, as you won't mess up the acrylic underneath, and also you can use more white spirit to remove the oil wash as well. This is actually how I was taught to use them with model vehicles. I have not tried it on minis yet though, and if you can do this without the varnish step, it would be preferable for me, as it's one less step.
Your output of high qaulity videos is amazing. I learn something new in every video!
The Kroot discord was very happy about this video. Especially happy to see Felix's work seeing a large audience. ❤️
6 mins and I’m having a blast watching this. Well produced.
OH MY GOD!! I've waited for this day for a long time!!! EOB covering oils!!
Your work is outstanding! Thanks for spreading kroot love. The kindred is very pleased.
Its always good to see Kroot get some love
I have some Winsor & Newton oil paints but I've only used them for washes so far. I really wanna challenge myself one day and try them on a whole mini, including blending them.
5:51 J "Death Guard Green is the worst paint"
Corax White "It's free real estate"
No, CEREMITE white is the worst.
Hashut copper is the worst paint. Too thin, huge flakes, bad medium, no covering power.
I got some oils recently not used them yet. Will do this weekend :)
If you thin your first base layer to a watery consistency and apply it over a black and white zenithal/value sketch, it'll be like supercontrast. You can then highlight with thicker oils and blend while it's drying. The thinned paint drys faster too because there's less paint on the model. I do pseudo batch painting by focusing on one model until a point that I need it to dry, then do the same with another
hell ya jay great stuff as always man
What the hell... I didn't realise 3D printing had come this far, this is insane
Resin 3d printing can get some really nice detail
You have to use a resin printer, you will never get this quality with filament. Resin has awesome detail but it is messy to work with.
A 6K resolution printer from anycubic just went onto the market, and a monstrosity of an 8K is out there now too. Huge price point on that one, and physically huge.
It takes a ton of work to get it there. It's basically a whole other hobby.
Top end resin printers are every bit as good as plastic miniatures are, in fact, the studio models GW shows off are 3d printed prototypes.
Forgeworld also uses 3d printed miniatures to form their molds.
Even affordable resin printers are very close to other miniatures to the point of being almost indistinguishable for reasonable uses.
I really enjoy your older videos, they seem to have a much more positive attitude.
Short answer: EMPHATIC YES. Practice first, practice a lot.
I wouldn't touch oils myself but your Kroot look fantastic!
Jay, oils as washes are great, but you're just scratching the surface, as they are amaaaazing for blending, and they are generally really vibrant, you should definitely try painting more complex stuff, like, I don't know, a NMM sword or something like that.
The paint job looks great! Oils can be tricky, but once you get the hang of them they're super awesome. What I like to do is prime a model with a lighter colour, get some good quality staining oil colours (they're mostly dark tones, so great for shadows) take a big brush full of thinner, and kinda "smother" a model in them, not super thick, but enough for total coverage. If you've seen James Wappel's videos, I'm talking about his first step, the Pre-Glaze. Then I wait about 5-10 minutes, it depends on the colour and even the brand sometimes, before I take some makeup sponges and q-tips and wipe it all off. The oil will not only have stained the primer, but it will stay in the recesses, instantly creating perfect depth of shadows and a zenithal-like basecoat! I usually tend to then continue painting with oils, but next time I do this I wanna try letting it dry just after the Pre-Glaze and then varnishing and doing the rest with transparent acrylics to see how that works out.
Jay may i just say i really like the new intro
Hell Yea Kroot! Granted, they also chuckle at "that's what she said" jokes; must've eaten a bus of teenagers in one of their raids.
Managed a sick NMM crimson fist with crisp double reflections easy with oils. I absolutely love them. Paired acrylic detailing they give a beautiful look
James Wappel does some truly magical things with oil paints, I recommend checking him out!
This, janes wappel has so much content on painting with oils. There’s a bit of a learning curve when switching acrylics to oils, but it’s a much more relaxing to use oils for me than acrylics.
Jay, you can't be doing this to me. I can't go out again to buy another set of hobby tools/paints. You are torturing my wallet here, please have mercy!
Using the thinner to scrub off dried sections of oil before adding highlights could save you a step and get more out of your base coating efforts.
I really like the final look of this kroots!
My first real try with miniature painting was a death guard kit a few years back and I had a heck of a time with the death guard green. I just thought I was crazy! Next time I do death guard I’ll have to try something else lol
Is death guard green worse coverage than hobgrot hide?
This is my favourite video on oils do far.
Oil painter here. I'm going to give you 2 big tips -
First, get yourself a bottle of liquin. This is oil medium with a bunch of drying salts in it to make curing faster. Cut your oil paint with 10-20% or so before thinning with spirits. If you do this correctly, with the levels of paint thickness you want in miniature painting, instead of looking at a week or more drying time, you should be mostly dry in 24 hours. I'm fully confident in a full cure in 4 days with my technique, and half that time "just to be safe".
Second, don't forget fire safety. Your brush cleaning rags are *exactly* the oily rags you where warned about as a kid. You must put these things in a fire safe storage container. Putting oil paint on a cardboard palette is popular in modelling circles for some reason (this is actually a terrible idea) and if you're going to do it (I can't recommend strongly enough that you don't) you must also treat this cardboard in the same manner. Don't just wad this stuff up and throw it in the trash, that absolutely can cause a fire.
I love your videos and painting & always look forward to your stuff! I haven't tried oils on minis yet. I'd be a little nervous about it chemically & have to research more. I've seen illustrators work in acrylic 1st and then oils on top but never in reverse (adding more acrylic on top of oil), or sealing them, as the extremely different drying times can cause cracking down the line. I'd suggest trying thinning oils with Liquin (a medium windsor newton makes it) as opposed to straight mineral oil. Liquin is made for thinning for glazing, mineral oil can be used to strip/remove paint which would be bad long term, it forces pigment to break with the binder. Also different pigments within oils dry at different rates (cadmium for example is very slow and dries in layers itself, so even tho top layer looks dry, it may shift over time if trapped under a dry acrylic or sealer layer). I have canvases painted where I was too liberal with thinning with just mineral oil and after a few years it looks not as good. I would also definitely be extra careful when handling or getting on your skin, as the pigments used in higher grade paints are toxic. I'm curious to see more where painters are using oils on minis, just still wrapping my brain around it :) Thanks for sharing your work!
bestiarum makes some absolutely nutty sculpts. they're my favorite sculptor so far
Great video as always. I just started using oils too, I’m grim-darking my new Templars. It’s a cool new set of skills to work on.
I know Marco Frisone of NJM avoids using a black primer as it desaturates the colours. Not sure what colour would work best for green, maybe blue or ochre?
Just was working on some Kroot myself and so happened upon this video. Great stuff! I love the Kroot sculpts, even as old as they are they have so much character and are easy to personalize. I've finished up my carnivores, now need to acquire a Krootox and some hounds. Have loved playing them in KT as well.
Holly ....! i just watched this video and wow thank you J i recently joined your channel i learned tons of knowledge from you keep creating more and thank you and your team so much.
I soak the sponge with mineral spirit and is makes the oils flow and create a natural feathering.
interesting! I will have to try that
These came out so incredibly well painted, I love the goofy goggles
Heh... ask the older guys. Many of us were painting stuff with Revell/Testors enamels. Not the same, but fairly same idea: organic solvent based paints. They definitely have their own nature and techniques: they eat your brushes, they blend very nicely and dry a bit slower (good and bad. Layering and washes are 3-5 hour jobs, not 5 minutes to dry).
I think the "best" now is a combination of the techniques and tools - like you're doing! "all oil" approach means that basecoating is an overnight job. I messed up many a model airplane applying another colour too soon. And the solvent sometimes messes up the plastics below - clouded many canopies too, for instance. And so on. So it was a revelation when I picked up proper acrylic paints and painted with them. Even the Ral Partha paints were much easier to handle and yielded quicker results (which, for starting painters, means quicker feedback loops for learning) than organic solvent based paints.
I think they have great uses - pin washing, lining, recess shading. Griming. Things that benefit from long blend times. But using oil paints as a base coat seems like terrible use of time. Kinda like applying primer with a brush! My current projects follow a similar process as yours: primer and acrylics on airbrush for what you need to apply efficiently and broadly. Then acrylic application in broad areas. Recess shades (especially tricky sections) are with oil/enamel. I'm sure painters more proficient with oils would get a lot more mileage out of that tool!
Felix also has versions of the Forge world kroot things which are really good, i highly recommend printing them out and giving it a go. Massive fan of yours and kroot so this is the perfect video for me!
Amazing video, am desperate to see a video painting the Big Kroot Pup
I bought oils a while ago to do the wash thing. I tried it on some space wolf reivers and it messed them up bad, user error of course (24 hours is too long to wait for the wipe off). Like you, I never got around to fixing them. I am in the middle of painting the kammandos from octarius. After watching this great video, you have given me the insperation to try again. thanks!
I was very curious about this randomly last week- Very informative, thank you!
Oils are amazing. I don't paint anything without at least some oils at this point. You should try doing more with the oils!! I highly recommend trying a full model with just oils (after priming, of course) So much fun doing wet on wet with them.
Next time try maximizing use of the oil paints to paint and blend the model in that base coating step. You might be amazed. Yes they take overnight to dry, but on that painting evening I get much more done, than I could with acrylics. And with far less stress, because of the very relaxing drying times on the brush and model.
Marco Frisoni and James Wappel get recommended a lot for oil paints but I would also like to point to Dmitry Fesechko. He made three incredibly useful oil painting tutorials.
I'm going to agree with everything you said. Wappel is the guy that got me into oil in minis and Dmitry was particularly informative.
I'll add a tip that I don't think those guys really talked about though -
Get yourself a bottle of liquin. This is oil medium with a bunch of drying salts in it to make curing faster. Cut your oil paint with 10-20% or so before thinning with spirits. If you do this correctly, with the levels of paint thickness you want in miniature painting, instead of looking at a week or more drying time, you should be mostly dry in 24 hours. I'm fully confident in a full cure in 4 days with my technique, and half that time "just to be safe".
And just to put it out there for any novices that are wanting to try this - don't forget fire safety. Your brush cleaning rags are exactly the oily rags you where warned about as a kid. You must put these things in a fire safe storage container. Putting oil paint on a cardboard palette is popular in modelling circles for some reason (this is actually a terrible idea) and if you're going to do it (I can't recommend strongly enough that you don't) you must also treat this cardboard in the same manner. Don't just wad this stuff up and throw it in the trash, that absolutely can cause a fire.
The kill team turned out really good. I just got my octavius box today and I can't wait to make my kill team with oils and streaking grime
those kroot are so cool, I am jelly
ugh the great painting tips and lore . thorough!
I 100% think kronor deserve some love from gw because they are amazing
Oils are cool... a little different to work with, as long as you know how they work. Cool vid.
Great video and content. The models looked amazing! I've just ordered a load of oils and artist white spirit to give these oil washes ago :) In your videos you use tan a lot, what brand is it?
Just got off work and saw this, LETTTTTTTTTSSSSSS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. made my day :)
Those conversions look really nice! congrats!
would be interested in you trying to wet blend with oils and showing us your struggles - maybe non metallic and cloth on a complicated model you wouldn't want to blend with acrylic. I've watched a few things but would be cool to see what I would likely exp. if I tried. Thanks!
A uv light in a box with the wet oils dries them in about 2 hours max...depending on original oil content...only use permanent pigments for this technique. Non colorfast pigments can change hue and even color.
Oils are also amazing for achieving nice blends. You can take as much of as you want and they will naturally blend to surrounding paint
they look great. I bought some windsor black and brown, but I accidentally bought white spirit that wasn't artist grade, so I never got to use them. as I'm doing black templar now, I don't have a lot of use for them, and the soft black from secret weapon is perfect for shading loin cloths and stuff like that. When I got back to my death Guard though, I'll likely try oil wash then (although similarly, the baby poop from secret weapon is great on death guard)
I really rate the secret weapon tech paints. they all have different uses. the "drying blood" is actually perfect for when you want blood spatter on bases, that's not fresh. it's the perfect tech paint for emulating drying blood. It's best to read the description on them, as they all do different things. some are great washes, some are specific purpose tech paints (like the drying blood) for instance the stone wash is absolutely perfect for when you want to do stone work on terrain. it gives it that slightly green tinted, aged looking stone with one coat.
Oil paints take longer to master but once you do everything looks just better… specially when you don’t have a lot of time.
If you just want base coat and oil wash the miniature will look already game ready and if you want to upgrade it then you can do highlights.
You can always work the highlights with the oils!
James Wappel does lots of 2 hour streams where he uses oils to paint miniatures at a level that well exceeds the 'eavy metal quality
I think Kroot are really neat, even have played against someone using a majority army of them back in 8th. As for oil paints though, I think they'd work well with terrain? Especially "older" as in war torn terrain, an example would be the old forgeworld city battle tiles and the specific one with the blown up rhino on it.
Always Up Vote Kroot.
I Dont consider the lictors a fail at all, it might not have been what you were planning on but i think its given you an awesome look for them!
Excellent painting video!
As someone from Nottingham, hearing you pronounce it was very wholesome
If you do this make sure you cover your solvent when you’re not using it and you’re in a well ventilated room or outside! Even with “odorless” solvents
i made my first oil wash a few days back, never going back to acrylic washes
Your minis always look awesome jay. Looks like you’ve been losing weight? Looking good dude 👍
Oils are a pretty useful tool but personally I've never really gotten on with them, the main thing for me is I like getting my minis painted quick, and the long drying time conflicts with this. I use enamel washes in a similar way, and their much faster drying time fits well with my painting style, but I would still say oils are generally better if the drying time isn't a problem to you. Also worst paint GW does imo is phonecian purple, it's a base paint yet is thinner and has worse coverage than the layer purples. I had struggled trying to wet blend with it due to how weak the pigment was, in the end I got naggaroth night which has much better coverage. Corax white gets a bad rap as the worst citadel paint, I've never had a problem with it, I think a lot of people just have it mistaken for the old ceramite white which even new was like cottage cheese. I think maybe some early pots of corax white were like that but they've since improved.
As for kroot, their history behind the scenes has been quite interesting, they actually existed since around rogue trader/ 2nd edition 40k so actually predate the Tau in terms of presence in lore. They were made auxiliaries to the Tau as what basically amounted to a consolation prize, as they along with vespid were at the time in contention with the Tau to become the next faction in 40k, with Tau winning out. It's interesting as Tau were originally envisioned as the 40k equivalent to the fantasy battle lizardmen but gradually grew into their own thing over the course of their development, so it's easy to see where kroot may have originally fit. I think part of the reason why kroot didn't succeed is their gimmicks aren't super unique compared to other factions, where their space barbarian aesthetic is already handled by the orks, and the evolutionary adaptation is already covered by tyranids, they're a combination of two niches rather than a new one. That being said, I like the idea of mercenary factions, nowadays souping is so heavily de-incentivized it'd be cool to have smaller niche factions that could ally without breaking army bonuses. Perhaps kroot could work for xenos, daemons or renagades and heretics for chaos, and squats for imperium would work.
When you say Kroot hounds, you make it sound like "croutons"... That's cute! ;)
You can speed up the drying process with a hair drier and just varnish before you go back to paint acrylic onto the model.
Great video - thanks! It really helps to remove some fears linked with oil paints. I also heard that oil paints can be easily used for blending while they are not fully dried (this 30-45 min period that you mentioned). Did you try this technique?
Thank you for sharing. Are you applying the Acrylic Highlights on top of the "oil Wash" or did you varnish first?
I wouldn't call oils harder or more complicated...just different. You can achieve wet blends in seconds with oils compared to acrylics. And after watching James Wappel's videos I've abandoned acrylics and work exclusively in oil.
I'd recommend trying water paint and gouache
Soon as i saw the lictors I thought dam those look cool.
The wild man from starwars????😃😄😁😆😅 5 Smiles.
I know that darkened effect on the nids wasn't what you were going for, but, they still looked cool.
I have put off trying oil washing ie grimdark for years as I always thought it was a bit to hard to do.
Now do some outrageous creations minis.
I miss this intro… literally the best
Kropotkin as predators would be awesome
felixthecrazy makes predator kroot head stls
For another technique for using oils (practically exclusively, not just as filters/washes), check out James Wappel's videos.
Step 1: Cover yourself in oil...
You just blew my mind with that tin foil trick haha. I have a ton of oil paints from doing paintings but have never used them on minis. This makes me want to try it out. Great stuff!
Excellent execution! Been watching since you guys were on Hobby Time in the Murder Basement. Thanks for the quality content and hard work!
Kroot were such a good choice to showcase oil washes. Good move! The natural colouration really emphasizes oil paints ability to create an environmental gradation.
What kind of brush care do you need to do when working with oils? I have natural hair brushes that I work with well, but I think spirits will strip out the natural oils there. Should you use throw away synthetics? I don't really want to create even more waste from the hobby...
Would Nick consider doing a 3D printer setup or troubleshooting/tuning video maybe? Those prints turned out very nice! I know there's a few different manufacturers, but whatever he's working with. Even just solutions to common problems?
Also, a secret. There's no "wrong" way to use your medium in art. That guy should go outside and maybe touch some grass or something...
I know I'm a little late to the party, but I just want to say that I've always kind of liked Kroot. I do think that they should be playable by any xenos army with one exception: tyranids. It just wouldn't make sense. GSC sure, but not tyranids.
I’ve been advocating for a Mercenaries codex for a long time. It would be a great way to bring in lesser Xenos races. Also they could do squads of humans and Eldar corsairs. And maybe even the return of Squats.
You are the Bob Roth of Wargaming, thank you
I like the Kroot belonging to the Tau, but I would love to see them get their own supplement with more (and better) models. Not all of us have access to 3D printers :(
Those Kroot look great; put them up in a battle report!
I keep pondering going with a heavily converted force using the Kroot to make a fantasy force of some sort for other games. There used to be a good conversion guide for shifting kroot into archers
My brain instantly says use a dark pigment to achieve a shadow affect where the models might be blocking the sun's rays!
I think you might have a weird pot of death guard green as mine is fine - as you say its a base colour so is thick - maybe someone swapped labels on yours and you really have the air version?
I always get a mean headache from mineral spirits. That’s why I avoid my oils so far but they really work great.
I think i bought the same makeup sponges as you did haha did your box shatter too? Great vid jay!
If you are complaining about coverage you haven't tried warp stone glow The number of layers I have to use to get Good Cover
Noice kroot👍👍