I've lately been trying to learn to use a different brand of paints for some of my modeling work, in particular for figurines. It's a neat brand out of Spain called Vallejo, and what makes it different from my other paints (besides the color selection) is that it's an acrylic paint, rather than an enamel like most of my modeling paints, or oils like what I generally use on my figures.

My reasons for trying are two-fold; I want to be able to work more quickly, and acrylics dry much faster than oils. In addition, I can buy these much more conveniently, from my local hobby shop. For the oils the best I can hope for is Michael's having the color I need. Failing that, it's a local supplier that isn't open convenient hours, and failing that I have to mail-order. Plus, I would feel a lot less paranoid about taking my kit to work to dabble on during lunch, if I weren't worried that the oils were getting smeared by the jostling of the car.

Problem is, acrylics aren't anything like oils, and in a lot of ways they're harder to work with. With oils, the plus side of the long drying time is that I have a lot of working time with the pigment, to blend and shade as I like. Not so with acrylics. I have only a little bit of time, even when I use a medium that slows the drying time. (Then I have a matter of minutes, rather than seconds.) So I'm having a lot of trouble, and I almost gave up, thinking that my oil technique was just fine, and I'd go back to it. Problem is, I haven't worked on anything in so long, I've also gotten really rusty with the oils.

What really annoys me about this is that I know, on an intellectual level, what to do to get the results I want. I know what colors to mix, and what brushes to use for which areas of the figure. But knowing and knowing are two very different things. Truth is, my fleshtones look either jaundiced or like flash-burn victims. The surface of my painted areas are rife with brushmarks. It's frustrating, this knowing but not knowing.

Programming can be that way, a lot of the time. I've had to learn Java for my current job, but I haven't written anything significant with it. So while I know Java, I don't know Java. The code I write isn't as good as it could be. If I had the luxury of a learning process like I had for Perl or C, the code would look a lot better. And I could say the same thing for Lisp, C++, Tcl/Tk and a few other languages that I can write applications in, if absolutely needed, but in which I would have a hard time writing applications well.

Fortunately, I'm a patient person. As much as I want to give up, I can get myself to calm down and keep going. So I go now to take yet another stab at painting with these thrice-damned acrylics. Because I've seen photos of others' work, so I know good results can be had. And if so, I can get those results as well, eventually.