I've used professional quaity acyrlics, and with just three primary colors (red, blue, yellow) and the color wheel theory, you can have any color you wish, far more than ready mixed colors. Get white too, that helps when mixing colors. Invest in good quality paints if you can. Acrylics come in small to very large tubes, and also in jars. Since acylics are a kind of plastic, they work well as the wood bends.
Other paints I have used are milk paint. You can make it a thin wash to very heavy. You thin it with water, and clean up is very simple. If you use milk paint, I dont recommend painting over any kind of finish, just on raw wood. I doubt you can get very hard lines like Adam did. Acrylics would be much better for masking and also careful hand work. Millk paints, though, use natural materials for pigmentation, so you are getting earth tones. My kitchen walls are a mustard, and that was probably yellow ochre, though I am not sure. I also used a grayish blue for the bedroom, and I suspect it uses lapis. The exact recipes are, I assume, proprietary, so I am not sure what they use exactly.
I've been thinking of trying oil paints. I saw some Russian folk art that uses oils in very intricate designs, washers, and other effects. Really fantastic look, but oils take a long time to dry (dont actually ever totally dry).
Russian icon paintings are facinating to me, also. They use egg tempuras, along with gold and silver leaf and other materials, and are usualy varnished. Traditionally, icons are done on wooden panels, so they should work well on wooden bows. Egg white is supposed to be a good selection when using earth pigments, as well.
You may want to look at the French and Spanish cave paintings for ideas, as well as medieval art, particularly illuminated manuscripts for painting ideas. Egyptian skewed perspective works are very cool, too, but I am not sure what kinds of paints they used. Oh, some of the Tut bows were gessoed and covered with gold leaf, but probably were never intended to be drawn or shot.
Dane
