"Wiping paint off horses with foam" Topic

The thread on Humbrol paints got me thinking about the Olde Days.
Peter Gilder used to recommend smearing brown oil paints on white primed horses and wiping it off with a piece of foam.
I got absolutely horrible results whenever I tried it.
I tried it a few times with different oils and different foam before I gave up.

Did ANYONE ever make this work?

I'm with you on this. Probably Peter could have used mud and spit and made it look good, so I don't feel too bad about my lack of success.

I've never heard of this technique for horses. Any link?

No link. It was in old gaming publications.

better results with old t-shirt.

I was told prime, then paint various flesh tones, oranges, light browns. let dry completely. paint with oil, usually van brown. let it stand. the longer the more the oil gets into the base coat. Therefore the darker the coat.

When you are satisfied with the length of time, take the t-shirt (cotton) and gently wipe it off. naturally shades in the grooves of the horse and the highpoints are highlighted.

I like the results on 15mm horses, not 25mm so much. Though it does depend on the casting.

Mark

ok try van dike

The Bleep-o-matic is really casting a wide net, hainna?

I tried it years ago. I couldn't get the results and was unhappy with how they looked, so before the oils had dried I simply painted and blended instead.

I think I'm familiar with the technique now (thanks Davoust). I've used something similar with 1/35 figures, Verlinden uses it. A sand base with acrylics then let that dry completely then coat with oil paint, usually sienna. Let it sit then wipe vertically down with a clean (no thinner on it at all) wide flat brush. It worked pretty well for me but it used up a lot of oil paint considering most was being wiped off. It did an "instant highlight" kind of thing.

Hmmmmm. It seems from the above I may have been a victim of my usual impatience and tried it too soon.
I would not have had the patience to allow oils to dry in their own good time either.

Well, that's a new trick this old dog will not be trying any time soon. I am still impatient.

It works for me (and many others), i've just passed on a few links in another thread:
TMP link

So basically, with this method you're using oil paints very much like you would use an oil based stain on wood?

Doug

I have had some good results with a white priming followed by inks. A blast of matte sealer at the end left a nice luster and really made it pop!

<been watching too much HGTV>

Looking at the links it looks like the same technique as the Verlinden style only they're using enamels. It's like a reverse drybrushing. One thing I did when I used it on my models was to use a very light stroke down and wipe the brush after each pass. The harder you apply the brush/sponge/cloth the more paint comes off and the lighter the color overall.

The bleepomatic is on steroids hainna?

I am old enough to have used this method … I used cloth after a fair time to "soak" in. Looked good – in fact better than current attempts.

I know someone who did this method on nice Spanish stucco buildings. At least he said that's how he did it; he's old enough to have read about it in those old gaming mags too, so I tend to believe him. The results were very good – as I had asked how he painted them. Dean

I thought it required oils too. Isn't that article in an early Miniature Wargames ..? issue 2 or 3 I believe but can't check from here.

Around that same time period, we had a professional painter who used that technique with oils. Esquisite results.

The trick was to let the oils dry a bit before wiping. They did not use the foam insert which came with the Hinchliffe boxes, but a dry brush. They used the foam insert to clean the excess oils with.

Didn't try it with oils, but tried similar with acrylics. It worked OK over a lighter coloured undercoat, but washes followed by a quick dry-brush did the same thing and was quicker.

Cheers,
JohnG

I use this process and it couldn't be easier or more beautiful. This technique draws from that used by "grainers" of the 19th C. who would faux grain the interior trim of houses made from cheap wood to look like walnut and burl. The key is a light undercoat followed by a darker top coat that is wiped down unevenly.

John, your problem is the base coat. Prime white yes, but the next coat (the undercoat) should be acrylic orange. This will yield a richer brown. Undercoating in tan would produce a Palameno, but a white base coat IMHO looks unnatural. If the under coat is an enamel or oil there is a chance that the top coat oil will desolve the base and you'll get bare metal showing through.

Paint horse tack in acrylic. You might also paint tail, maine, and lower legs black.

Try to keep the oil top coat as thick as possible, but a drop of Japan drier will reduce the time you have to wait for the piece to set up.

Apply oils (van Dyke, umbers etc) with a hog hair brush not too heavy not too thin. I'll do 20 or so horses at a time so this gives the paint time to set up a bit.

The foam is used more to remove the bulk of the excess, not final burnishing. Note also that a brand new piece of foam is too agressive. The foam works better if it has been broken in with oil paint which is then squeezed out. (that was probably why some of you didn't like the initial results).

Use the foam also to push oil into the recesses of the figure. Coarser foam leave streeks, but these are corrected by next step. An alternative to the foam is to wrap the figure in cottencloth and pinch the cloth (do not rub) to soak up the excess oil.

A soft cloth such as that fron a t-shirt or tissue is used to remove the streaks left by the foam. A very light touch is needed here. Use the cloth in select areas to burnish in the highlights, especially the rump and neck. Again, fresh cloth is too agressive. At this point the effect should be stunning.

This technique works best for brown horses. I have less success with greys and blacks. I have used it to very good ends with 15s and 28s.

The oils I use is Artisan Water Mixable Oil Paints. I can then clean up with water. I also use Q-tips. Lots and lots of Q-tips

laptot,

That's a great explanation. Could you post how you do greys and blacks too? I know you're less satisfied with the results, but I'd like to try it on them too.

Oberst Radi

To achieve a grey using this technique, one primes white and undercoats in either white or very light grey. For a whiter horse try using Liquidtex white as it has less tooth than Vallejo and is therefore less likely to stain grey. Top coat in Paynes Grey which is blue black. In doing light grey horses the dark areas are like the folds in white robes. Here you're trying to show shadows that are much more contrasty than with a brown horse. It's the starkness of the shadows and highlights in a grey horse that are difficult to render natural and is very dependent upon the style of casting. Old Glory and Minifig horses suit this technique better that Rank and File horses.

I find that the Grey horses require more drybrush touch up than do brown horses. Drybroush white highlights. Greys, however have dark patches on their flanks --the very spots that turn out the lightest using this technique. Therefore I find it necessary to go back and stipple the flanks with dark grey and after this dries stipple with white. If you try to do all the stippling right after the wipe-off of the paynes grey you'll just end up with a mess.

The oil wipe methods does not work at all for black horses because if you undercoat in black and top coat in white you will be leaving the white in the recesses which is the opposite from what you want. You might undercoat in white and top coat in black, but this is really the same thing as what you did to get a Grey. You might try to remove less black oil, but this process looks wrong if you don't burnish the highlights and I find it hard not to remove so much black so as to not create a white horse. The difference between a white horse and a black one is not as great as you might think.

I find it easier to do black horses by base coating in black grey acrylic, doing tack and maines in black and drybrushing on the highlights with light grey acrylic.

I find doing desert horse breads easier doing the dry brushing method as well using Iraque sand, white etc. over med. grey primer. I must admit that I so love doing bays and chestnut horses using the wipe-off oil technique that I did up most of my Chasseurs d'Afrique with brown horses only to discover later that these units rode greys. Oh, well.

Camels I prime in med grey. Then white drybrush all over to create various grey tones. Then I drybrush (using a slightly wetter paint than one would normally use drybrushing) FolkArt Camel making sure to keep the belly, inside legs, and under side of the neck lighter in tone -almost white.

Oil wipe-off and drybrushing produce very different sheans. One of the attractions with the oils is that the horses glissen as if sweating which looks very realistic. Drybrushed horses have a gritty finish. The two styles look a bit odd if mounted on the same base. Sealing and then a coat of dullcoat will make them match better, but it does eliminate that nice glissening of the oils.

I hope you try this for yourself. Like many things in life the simplest techniques produce the best results.

Thanks, laptot. I've copied this to my notebook and will try it at the first opportunity as I have a lot of horses and haven't painted any yet.