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For awhile I had been tossing around starting to paint my birds with oils and kinda of experimented with it last year on the cheap side by painting some wire and canvas mallards, green wing teal and blue wing teal with Rustoleum that were going in my rig. The paint held up fine and while not artist oils gave me a feel for that medium.
This is an antique Dudley style hooded merganser drake that I've been messing with. I blocked in some white, didnt like it and blacked those areas out to do again.

Seems like a lot of work to get right

Nah, time yes but getting it right is the goal and the fun

La hood! Very cool bird

Kinda looks Asian

Looking good Rick

I would love to start messing with oils a little. The limited time I have is keeping me from making the leap.

Beautiful work Rick. How do you accomplish that blending on the wing?

Looking good man. The trick to oils, for me anyway, was to get away from mediocre brushes and figuring out how to cut the paint just right for my liking.

gila-river wrote:Beautiful work Rick. How do you accomplish that blending on the wing?

Baysider wrote:Looking good man. The trick to oils, for me anyway, was to get away from mediocre brushes and figuring out how to cut the paint just right for my liking.

That blending on the sidepocket was what I was really looking forward to with oils. Its got 3 colors in the blend, raw umber, a yellow and titanium white.
You're so right about the mixing, too much of this and it dries to fast, too little and the paint doesn't level out well and so on. I just found a place locally to buy artist oils at and they had a particular brand I was wanting and glad I did. I have mostly Old Holland, a couple tubes of Williamsburg and now some Gambling. I really like the Gambling.

Scott R wrote:Looking good Rick

I would love to start messing with oils a little. The limited time I have is keeping me from making the leap.

Scott Im not sure it was a great move with my impaitient tendacies but its fun still and I actually like it more with the added time to work with the paint.