+ inload: Oil dot filters +

+ Toll the Great Bell Twice! +

+ With push of button, fire the engine and spark turbine into life. +

+ Metalica walks. The sacred unguents have been applied and the necessary sacrifices offered up to the Machine Spirits of five Engines. Bar a few relatively quick details, the painting is all done, and it's time to start preparing for tabletop battle... +

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+ [Insert heavy metal song pun here +]

+ Precision strike: cutting it close +

Two days to go, and as you can see above, the oils are on and drying. The nice thing about oils is their long working time. There's no rush, and no stress (well, no additional stress about timings!), so you can gently tick through the session, and find them perfectly workable at the end. I used a couple of techniques here: oil dot filters, and washes. 

The washes are done almost exactly as with acrylics: thin the paint down and apply with a brush. The main difference is that I suggest you use rather less oil paint than you would acrylic paint as they'll take much longer to dry. Oil dot filters, however, are a new technique to the blog, so here's the rundown:

+ Oil dot filters +

The purpose of this technique is to add interest and subtle variance to a flat area, creating a sense of scale and texture. The result is a little like a glaze, in that you are aiming to work over the area evenly (rather than to avoid/fill recesses, for example). It differs from a glaze in that you're not aiming for a flat colour, but rather a variegated result.

I started by squeezing out pea-sized amounts of burnt sienna, raw sienna, Winsor lemon, cadmium red, and lamp black oils onto a palette, then used an old split brush to stipple lots of small dots of the various colours over each Titan in turn. The paint was used neat, and the brush was dry. Rather than rinse it between colours, I simply wiped the excess away to keep the brush dry.

Once that was done, I swapped to a goat hair fan brush [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+], as these are relatively cheap and sturdy. I loaded this with thinner (I used Sansodor [+noosphericexloadlink embedded+]).

I then slowly and steadily drew the fan brush directly downwards over each panel in turn. This draws the oil paint downwards from each dot, softening and creating gentle streaks. At the bottom of the area, lift the brush away, wipe it on a cloth, and repeat until the effect is as you want it. The more brushstrokes you use, the more oils will be drawn away. The key is to work steadily and evenly, and always in one direction.

+ The finished result – compare this with the pre-oils version below. +

+ Strike to enlarge. +

+ Oil filter keynotes +

• Ventilate  Throw open a window. Odourless or not, solvents in the respiro-sacs aren't very good for you. 
• Cede control  When stippling, don't worry about an even effect or coverage. Slight variation across the surface looks more natural and pleasing. Likewise, having some dots containing more paint than others will give variety of tones in the streaks.
• Adapt  Remember that the Titan is not locked in the pose you've chosen, so look at the panel and decide on the direction before working straight down to the base. Rainfall and similar weathering will carry dirt and grease straight down whever possible, so consider where 'down' is likely to be for the majority of the time.
• Vary  You can also do oil filters in circles or more random directions to add interest to flat areas.

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+ The Maniple +

Here're a few hard-earned shots of the maniple as it currently stands:

+ Old Three Skulls +

+ Ferratus Tertius +

+ Fors Clavigera +

+ Praeterita Carnivorus +

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+ What next? +

I also worked a bit more on the nameplates from Obsidian Forge last night, too. Thinking more on it, I could have used oils... but given the time pressure, I decided to stick with my comfort zone of acrylics. These have been worked up with a combination of washes and drybrushing. I'd like to polish them up a little further, but as they're functional already, that'll depend on how the rest of the 'stretch goals' go.

 And to close, as I have the shots and haven't shared them, here's a close-up of the eye lenses on Steel Hammer (pre-oils in this shot)...

... and one of the back of the Titans, to show off how lovely and clean they were before I got stuck in with griming them up!