And here's the less than perfect shading (just using Snakebite Leather and water; might've turned out better with contrast medium...). It doesn't look quite as bad in this pic as in real life, but again, the beauty of painting plague marines is that another splotchy coat of brownish goop isn't really gonna hurt, at the end of the day...

Nice. I like the fact you are going for the 30k Death Guard colour scheme instead of the standard green. 
 

One question - if you use oils is there a chance the acrylic paint you’ve already used can get screwed up? Only I can remember painting a bathroom once and all the paint cracking, and being told it was because whoever decorated it previously had used an oil paint.

2 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

Nice. I like the fact you are going for the 30k Death Guard colour scheme instead of the standard green. 
 

One question - if you use oils is there a chance the acrylic paint you’ve already used can get screwed up? Only I can remember painting a bathroom once and all the paint cracking, and being told it was because whoever decorated it previously had used an oil paint.

Well, in theory, oils and acrylics (and the substances that are used to dissolve/dilute them) don’t react chemically with each other at all. In practice, though, there’s definitely the potential for “mechanically” damaging the layers below, when you apply and interact with the other layers (such as when rubbing away the oil paints), but the solvent used to make an oil wash (for example) shouldn’t dissolve the acrylics or anything like that.

From what I can tell, people don’t quite agree on whether you need to varnish between the different steps, but it seems to me like the people who don’t varnish don’t have worse results than the people who do, so just going by that, varnish doesn’t appear to be necessary (although gloss varnish would certainly make the oil wash flow more smoothly into the recesses). I’m basically just going to play around a bit and see what happens.

But, remember, I’m very much a beginner with oils, so please don’t take my words on the subject as gospel or anything 

20 minutes ago, Antarius said:

Well, in theory, oils and acrylics (and the substances that are used to dissolve/dilute them) don’t react chemically with each other at all. In practice, though, there’s definitely the potential for “mechanically” damaging the layers below, when you apply and interact with the other layers (such as when rubbing away the oil paints), but the solvent used to make an oil wash (for example) shouldn’t dissolve the acrylics or anything like that.

 

From what I can tell, people don’t quite agree on whether you need to varnish between the different steps, but it seems to me like the people who don’t varnish don’t have worse results than the people who do, so just going by that, varnish doesn’t appear to be necessary (although gloss varnish would certainly make the oil wash flow more smoothly into the recesses). I’m basically just going to play around a bit and see what happens.

But, remember, I’m very much a beginner with oils, so please don’t take my words on the subject as gospel or anything 

Thanks for the info, really interesting.

Don’t worry, I won’t be taking the advice, even though it sounds perfectly right. I have a lot of memories of painting aeroplanes as a kid with my dad using Humbrol oils, and I don’t want to have to go anywhere near turpentine again! Will definitely be interested to see how you get on though, if you do decide to go down that route.

11 hours ago, TheArtilleryman said:

Thanks for the info, really interesting.

 

Don’t worry, I won’t be taking the advice, even though it sounds perfectly right. I have a lot of memories of painting aeroplanes as a kid with my dad using Humbrol oils, and I don’t want to have to go anywhere near turpentine again! Will definitely be interested to see how you get on though, if you do decide to go down that route.

 

 

You're very welcome. I've been eyeing oil paints for a long time and read/watched quite a bit about them, so I have lots of info but little practical experience. I've only used it a tiny bit on some ghouls and on my Great Unclean One, but in both cases I think I actually didn't use any thinners but just used tiny amounts of paint that I wiped away manually. It does seem to be a medium with great possibilities, but those youtubers make it seem almost like magic, which it probably isn't. Still, it's a tool I'd like to be able to use.

Like you, I'm also not very keen on the thinners, because even the odourless ones are still just as toxic (so I guess you could argue the smelly ones are actually a bit better for you, since you don't run the risk of forgetting that you're sitting in toxic fumes). But I think with the amounts involved, if I just work in a well-ventilated room and place the minis somewhere else while they dry it should be ok.