Oil paint for wood effect.

[Gav G]

I have an Eduard Albatros D.Va Profipack arriving next week and would like to try the wood effect with oils technique.  I read somewhere to use Winsor and Newton oils but not to get the stuff for students as its not good enough?  Is the Winton range OK or should I be buying the more expensive "Artists' Oil Colour" range? 

 

Thanks!

 

[Beardie]

The Winton range should do fine if you are on a budget. The main difference between the ranges is cost of pigment. Artists quality uses more expensive, rare, although not neccessarily better pigments where the Winton range will tend to use modern synthetic replacements for these pigments and artists quality uses much more pigment in the tube. The main thing is to pick browns that are classed as transparent and use them sparingly to give that 'woody' streaky effect. If the drying time puts you off then Alkyds (Winsor and Newton 'Griffon' brand) are a good alternative with all the same attributes of the artists quality paint but with a much accelerated drying time of around 24 hours to touch dry.

[berman]

Artist quality pigments are ground more to produce finer particles. The pigments are also more fade resistant. Whatever paints that you choose, it is important to place a cover over your model to prevent dust from adhering. Feature on home page of ww1aircraftmodels.com for building a heat box to both prevent dust and accelerate drying. For more information on applying oil paint do a Google search for "woodgrain painting technique by eric larson"

[Beardie]

Artists quality are not neccessarily finer ground as colourmen have different opinions when it comes to the particle size that gives the best colour and neither are they neccessarily more fade resistant as professional artists and art restorers may want, or need, to use 'traditional' pigments which are not as durable as modern synthetic alternatives. When it comes to browns synthetic iron oxide and hydrated iron oxide pigments are generally used and so permanence isn't really an issue whether you are looking at artists quality or budget ranges.

 

The most striking difference between artists and budget quality paints is consistency from the tube. Typically artists quality stuffs as much pigment in as the linseed or safflower oil will hold to produce a heavy bodied paint while student quality will have a lower pigment to oil ratio and possibly fillers and will be typically less 'stiff' from the tube.

[k5054nz]

I use the Winton paints as they're shown in Wingnut Wings' How To guide:

[Jeff.K]

a few centuries ago i did passable wood grain dragging and drybrushing with artists acrylics. 

 

this was for an art school prank in 1:1 scale (shelving units for storing artworks had been painted white, i repainted them to look like "natural" plywood. fooled most people, including art professors, but people will look more closely at models than background furniture. 

may be worth some experimenting for anyone who reacts badly to oil paints and solvents. i react a bit badly, but time-wise it's such a small part of a project that i won't be doing it often, so i'll just give the art oils a go, unless and until my eyes swell shut from the fumes.... 

[bhouse]

19 hours ago, k5054nz said:

they're shown in Wingnut Wings' How To guide:

@k5054nz Thanks for posting that. It's the easiest-to-follow guide I've seen.

Brian

[Beardie]

@Jeff.K What is it about oils that you react badly to? If it is the thinners there are now water soluble oils available from a number of manufacturers including Royal Talens 'Cobra' oils and various others. They have all the same properties as regular oils except they utilise a modified linseed oil that is water soluble. Unfortunately, if it is linseed or safflower oil you are allergic to then there is more of a problem. If it is only linseed you are allergic to then there is a new range of oils from Sennelier called 'Rive Gauche' which use only safflower oil and they also include a siccative recipe so they will dry in half the time taken by traditional oils and will not yellow as much either.

 

[Gav G]

Thanks for the replies!

 

Eric Larson's guide was one of the main ones I'd read on the technique.  When I went to look at it again, I noticed that he'd got both ranges of paint in one of the photos so i went ahead and ordered the Winton colours.  My airbrush arrived yesterday so hopefully I'll be able to practice on some styrene sheet this weekend.  I still have two models to finish (mostly painting) before starting the Albatross so no rush I guess.

 

[GrahamB]

Some of the examples of this oil-paint technique - such as the WNW version above - are very heavy-handed when it comes to the oil-paint application. You need only tiny amounts, well-thinned, to get a proper effect; it is more to get differences in tone and hue than over-scale 'grain'  patterns. With this in mind, the brand of paint is not so critical, but buying decent stuff, like Winsor-Newton, is advisable - and will last for ever.

[Jeff.K]

On 10/4/2017 at 11:26 PM, Beardie said:

What is it about oils that you react badly to?

organic solvents in general. linseed oil wasn't as bad as some, but i don't think i could use it every day. haven't tried safflower oil. 

that said, i don't spend that many days using the stuff, so i may just put up with it to get a result. 

[k5054nz]

On 10/5/2017 at 4:06 AM, bhouse said:

@k5054nz Thanks for posting that. It's the easiest-to-follow guide I've seen.

Brian

My pleasure! I had a printed-out copy on the wall so I could learn how to do it. It really helped that I could buy the exact stuff used, too!

[Jeff.K]

2 hours ago, GrahamB said:

it is more to get differences in tone and hue than over-scale 'grain'  patterns.

this is a very good point. i can't really see much 'grain' on my wooden table and chairs 10M away... but they look like wood. 

 

i think it's possible to get it right with acrylics, but it would take some experimenting. as artist paints go, Golden acrylics are top shelf, and they have a variety of viscosities of medium available, from watery on up to basically modelling paste. with acrylics at a small scale, i'd want to have some retardant handy and experiment with wet-on-wet, to avoid out of scale 'grain'. 

PS i'd recommend experimenting on plastic card, rather than a very expensive kit!

Edited October 7, 2017 by Jeff.K

[Beardie]

The question of the 'strength' of the wood grain is another one of those 'what appeals and what would be real' questions and I think personal taste is the only way to go really. It's like the turnbuckle question. Even using the smallest workable tubing the resulting turnbuckles will be quite out of scale but, to some, they have to be there and visible or the model isn't up to snuff.

[Jeff.K]

yeah, it's pretty much the 'art' part of it. a lot of stuff that makes a model look less real to my eye, like pre-shading, does look good. 

my aesthetic is simple: at scale viewing distance, based on photos, can i see it? simple, but not easy. especially with World War One... 1:1 scale flying replicas help.  also, as a physical object, a model can be viewed from multiple distances. 

yeah i have a tendency to look at something i cannot yet do and ask "how can i make this more difficult?"

[Beardie]

I agree, I am for realism myself but there is always that nagging wee obsessed modeller inside my head who says, you didn't use any turnbuckles or that doesn't look like wood grain should look. 

[Jeff.K]

when i was teaching art, i had a lot of students frustrated because whatever they were working on was never as good as they thought it should be. 

i told them "keep in mind that when you look at your work, you will probably always see things that could be better or at least different. you know how when someone else does good work and you look at it and everything seems to be just right? that's partly because to you, it looks finished. ask them how they feel about it." 

if they asked, they found out the other student pretty much felt the same thing. i always do... 

[Brandy]

I use acrylics for wood effects in 1:72, and have posted my method in my current Floatplanes Group Build log. The entire fuselage was wood, which is far more than I've attempted before. It's far quicker than oils, and I'm very happy with how it's turned out. If you'd like to take a shufti it's the Donnet-Leveque build.

 

Ian

[McNab]

On ‎10‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 2:29 PM, Beardie said:

I agree, I am for realism myself but there is always that nagging wee obsessed modeller inside my head who says, you didn't use any turnbuckles or that doesn't look like wood grain should look. 

ha ha yes I seem to have one of those annoying little bathplugs in my head too, Beardie. And it is NEVER satisfied...

[Steve Coombs]

I've managed to do nicely before now by using Tamiya XF-59 or similar as an undercoat and using watercolour pencils of various shades of brown to add some grain or pattern for plywood. A damp rather than wet brush along the grain tones down the starkness of any lines, and if it's all too much, it wipes off readily. Some of the excess goes into panel lines to accentuate them a little. The downside is that you have to seal the work quickly after it dries (low pressure, please), lest you literally put your finger in it.

[Ratch]

When I was at Art School Winsor & Newton were THE brand to use 👍

[Bear Paw]

Practice practice and practice is what I found was the key to this. I looked at as much as I could find on you tube and internet at large and tried it out on sheets of plastic card. Technique is very important and it is not so much the visibility of the grain but the effect of the direction of the brush strokes on the eye that gives the impression of wood.