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Learning Art > Oils > Oil Color Paints

Oil Color Paints

Oil paints are made with organic or mineral powders mixed with liquids called binders. With tempera and watercolor, the binders are egg or glue. In present-day oil color the binder is linseed or poppy oil.

There are numerous oils that can be used in painting, and preference varies greatly from artist to artist. One of the best and most favoured is linseed oil. All tube paint is mixed with linseed oil, though some other paints are ground in poppy.

As linseed oil has a tendency to yellow the colors, it is a good idea to avoid mixing it with lighter color mixtures. For lighter color mixtures, you can use poppy oil as it has less tendency to yellow. There are also other mediums available. Try out your own mediums, take recommendations from other artists, experimenting until you find something that produces the results you are after.

Nobody really knows with accuracy how the old masters made up their paint. One fact is that the paint used by the old masters dried rapidly in the containers they used, whereas the paint sold in tubes does not dry rapidly at all. It can remain wet for as long as two or three days after painting.

The reason for this is that art suppliers needed to store tubes on their shelves for weeks at a time, requiring the addition of a retarder, to stop the paint going hard. This is one of the few disadvantages of tube paint and the remedy, short of making your own color, is to add a drier to it when painting.

Choosing Oil Paints: A glance at any artists' catalogue will show anything up to ninety different hues. Choosing a practical palette from this assortment may seem little short of a nightmare. The guiding principle is to keep your palette simple, ensuring it contains the primaries: red, yellow and blue.

Oil paint varies in price and quality, and there are several good brands of paint on the market today. Some artists prefer to work with Grumbacher Artist Oils, but Winsor & Newton oil paints are also quite popular.

Paints also come in different grades. There are student grade paints and professional grades. Buy the best paints you can afford - professional grade if possible. The colors are more brilliant than student grade paints.

Most paints these days are artificial dyes of remarkable brilliance and are semipermanent. This means that over the years they have a good chance of retaining their purity without discoloration or fading. Most manufacturers mark their paint 'permanent', 'semipermanent' or 'fugitive' or should do, because there is no guarantee that any color will do what it is supposed to do without some help from the manufacturer.

A suggestion for your starting palette of oil paints would be a Winsor lemon, Winsor red and Winsor blue. With these three colors alone you can mix yellows, oranges, greens and a delicate purple. From there, the addition of burnt or raw umber can then be used for making blacks and greys, ochres and browns. After that, you simply need white for making the lighter tones, and there you have the perfect beginner's palette.

These colors have the advantage of being inexpensive and economical. If you have difficulty in obtaining the Winsor colors, cadmium yellow and cadmium red can be substituted and Monastral blue for the Winsor blue. Avoid Prussian blue (a bad drier and changes its hue in light) if you cannot obtain Monastral blue and use ultramarine instead. The cadmiums, however, are more expensive.

When you have gained experience with these colors, others may be added, like ochre and cobalt.

White Paint Colors: White, curiously enough, is one of the most important paints on your palette and should be looked at with care. White is not just white. Any old white will not do. Each white on the market has different qualities that will affect your painting in different ways.

You will be using plenty of white during painting and you can never be mean with it. Put out plenty on the palette. You will need much more than you think, so keep a good supply of it handy.

When using white, look for its ability to cover well. See that it fuses completely with other colors and that there are no lumps that won't dissolve. Some whites break up when diluted with turps and are annoying to paint with. When using the white thickly note how it comes off the brush. Is it pleasant or unpleasant and so on.

From all this you will see that you will have to try out all sorts of makers' whites, from cheap to expensive (though in fact no white is all that expensive).

The three most commonly used whites are flake, zinc and titanium white. Titanium white is supposed to be much better than the other two, but does not dry so quickly. Flake white is made with lead and is a good drier. It is supposed to have certain disadvantages when mixed with cadmiums, vermilion, artificial ultramarine, the madders and lakes. But when used in combination with zinc, these disadvantages are overcome. Zinc is reputed to crack. Titanium seems to be all right with all the colors. You can buy these whites at any art store.

Other whites you might like to try are decorators' white, which is much cheaper than either flake, zinc or titanium. It is made from lead, is much coarser and dries rather quickly. Pure lead white can be bought in lumps from a builders' supplier and softened to the desired consistency with linseed oil. This is the purest white you can get, but is much coarser than tube white and has to be stored carefully otherwise it will harden very quickly. It has its own qualities which are quite different from the finer ground tube colors and would be very useful if you liked thick impasto. It is also cheap in price.

You can also use undercoat white, the sort used for priming, that comes in tins. It is quite safe to use, though it is usually thinner in consistency and often dries matt so that the result has a tempera finish. Undercoat dries quickest of all. Paintings done this way are often referred to as distemper paintings.

If you want to try out a tin of white but find it too thin, leave the lid off for a few days. It will soon thicken. There may be a skin or deposit of oil on top. Pour this off and you will find that the paint underneath is quite good to paint with.

A good white should be pleasant to handle. It should not behave like toothpaste or crumble like cream cheese. Try out as many kinds of white as you can lay hands on until you find one with all the good qualities: opacity, consistency, good in mixtures and nice to handle. And it should dry well too. A white that stays wet too long is not a good white.

Oil Paint Handling Tips:

1. Because of its nature, oil paint isn't so easily removed as watercolor. Have plenty of clean rags handy. Wear an overall, smock or an old shirt. If you aren't able to have a studio or room set aside just for painting in, and have to use the living room or a bedroom, protect the floors with newspaper and cover up any furniture near by.

2. Oil paint tubes should always have their tops on, otherwise they will harden and spoil.

3. Always arrange oil paints on your palette in the same order so that you'll eventually be able to pick up a color without looking at your palette.

4. Think before mixing. Choose which color/hue to mix, then decide exactly which colors to use. Avoid poking into several colors on the palette. Start with the lighter color, using a palette knife to scoop a generous amount, then add the other color. Mix and add from here, keeping the mix in one place with a brush without spreading too far out on the palette. For brighter, cleaner mixtures, mix with a knife.

5. Paints containing lead, cobalt, and manganese accelerate the drying process. You can mix them with other colors to speed up drying. They are absolutely ideal for under layers.

6. Avoid mixing mud! 2-3 colors + white, or 3+ colors = mud. Aim to use 2 colors, rinsing brush in between picking colors, then wiping blade with paper towel or paint rag.

7. Ivory Black dries much slower than other oil paints, so avoid using it for an under-painting or sketch.

8. Avoid using linseed oil in whites and blues as it has a marked tendency to yellow when used with light colours. Poppy oil is recommended for use with light colours as it has the least tendency to yellow. The only disadvantage with poppy oil is that it does dry slower.

9. The proportion of oil should be increased for each subsequent layer in an oil painting. As the lower layers absorb oil from the layers on top of them, the upper layers can crack if they dry faster than the lower ones.

10. Use linseed oil for an under-painting or in the bottom layers of any layered oil painting, as it dries the most thoroughly of all the oils.

11. Oil paintings should not be dried in the dark. This can cause a thin film of oil to rise to the surface, thereby yellowing it. A yellowed surface can sometimes be removed by exposure to bright daylight.

12. Cleaning away a layer of oil paint or oil varnish can be done using alcohol, which is a powerful solvent.

13. If paint on your palette forms a lot of wrinkles when it dries, you have added too much oil.

14. To test whether a bottle of white spirits or mineral turps is suitable for oil painting, put a small quantity on a piece of paper and allow it to evaporate. If there is no residue, stain, or smell once dry, it should be suitable.

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Oil Color Paints

White Paint Colors: White, curiously enough, is one of the most important paints on your palette and should be looked at with care. White is not just white. Any old white will not do. Each white on the market has different qualities that will affect your painting in different ways.

Oil Paint Handling Tips:

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