Hobby Hints

I have, for a long time, considered myself a 'diehard' oil painter but I bought some of the Vallejo paints a year or two ago and had a go at using them. I must say that I struggled BIG TIME!! At first.

I've just finished a 54mm figure using mostly acrylic and (to me at least) there are clear advantages to this medium. It is quicker - much quicker - than oil painting, it is a more relaxed (less intense?) way to paint and I have managed to get far more subtlety in my shading and highlighting.

My first figure will win no prizes but I am nevertheless very pleased and encouraged by the result. I'm sure that practice will improve my painting and that I will need to use oils for some parts of a figure but I now look at the acrylic paints not just as a different medium but, in many ways, a better medium.

I can't speak for other oil painters but what I've found so far is that it was easier for me to achieve that level of realism in acrylics. To get the same result from oils would have taken longer and (quite frankly) would have been less enjoyable - it was quite a thrill to start to paint a pair of breeches and to see a finished result just a couple of hours later instead of the couple of days it would have taken me with oils!

As a side issue, I guess that the "level of realism" is in the eye of the beholder; to my eye, some parts of the figure I've just painted ARE more realistic. Other parts are merely different.