Going oil crazy

With the local art supply store having a 30% discount on Winsor & Newton products, it was a now or never moment for me to finally stock up on oil paints and add this medium to my painting aresenal. Every other item in my hobby-to-buy-list was put on hold and limited funds were channeled into creating a respectable inventory of oil paints for use in my scale model/miniature art. Because the ringgit is weak, the budget oils paints were unfortunately still quite pricey. But at least the sale puts Winton Oil Colour paints into the 'buyable with some belt tightening' rather than 'oh hell no' category.

Winton Oil Color - Winsor & Newton's more affordable range of oil paints

If I could I actually would've preferred to get paints from the Winsor & Newton Artists' Oil Colour range which have a higher proportion of finer pigments. However paints from this range are insanely expensive with certain hues costing up to RM200 per 37 ml tube. That's the price of an average scale model kit and then some. So adding Artists' Oil Colour paints to my collection is a no go, for now.

An excellent medium for oil paints especially for use in scale modelling

Meanwhile, in addition to the Winton oil paints I also bought a one liter tin of Winsor & Newton Artists' White Spirit (see above) which is a medium for oil paints. To give you an idea of the savings involved, the price for this 1000 ml tin - before factoring in the discount - is similar to a 100 ml bottle equivalent being sold under hobby company labels. That's just insanely skewed economics. Anyway, I've used the Artists' White Spirit before for weathering purposes and they seem to work just as fine as the hobby labeled ones if not better. It's a necessary ingredient just like water is to acrylics.         

So many whites and blacks to choose from but only one grey

Variety of yellows is even more impressive ... overkill to all but an avid painter

Going forward it'll be important to know the combination of pigments used for each oil color, red or otherwise

As I rarely see these oil paints on sale in my local art supply store, I went a little bit oil crazy and perhaps purchased more than I may actually need for current projects. Then again, we painters can never have too much colors. While it's good to know how to mix (almost) any hue you want using primary colors, which for Winton oil paints are Cadmium Yellow Hue, French Ultramarine and Permanent Rose, there are times it's far more convenient to just use a per-existing hue. And yet my collection remains incomplete because a lot of blue hues were out of stock during the sale.

Blues in my Winton collection is incomplete as many bluish hues were out of stock during the sale

Winton also has a good range of greens from the natural greens to the turquoise hues

Arguably the most important range of oil colors (apart from blacks, greys and whites) for an AFV modeler

Of course there are oil paints specially formulated for miniature painters and scale modellers such as Abteilung 502. Incidentally I also stocked up on those too quite a while ago when a local hobby store had a clearance sale on all its Abteilung products citing a severe lack of demand. As such I might do a comparison between these oil paints and Winton ones in the future. In terms of hue variety, Winton is better as Abteilung tailors its products primarily to the scale modelling community. In my limited experience of both, I suspect the latter is closer in quality to the Winsor & Newton Artists' Oil Colour range. Regardless, I now have no more excuses to not paint with oil for future projects.